EOTO: Carrier Pigeon Communication

Carrier Pigeons were used in both World War 1 and 2 to send messages.

 If you're looking for the inventor of the carrier pigeon, I have some disappointing news: there isn't one. No name, no patent, no origin story with a single genius behind it. This technology emerged slowly, over centuries, as people in different parts of the ancient world noticed something about a bird they already had around.

That noticing started early. Tablets found in Mesopotamia and Egyptian hieroglyphics suggest pigeons were being domesticated by both civilizations already around 3000 BCE, probably for food long before anyone thought to use them as messengers. Eventually, though, people realized these birds could find their way back to a fixed home base from surprisingly far away. Once that homing instinct was understood, it was only a matter of time before someone put it to practical use.

That "someone" turned out to be the Greeks, and the circumstances were pretty specific. The Greeks used homing pigeons as early as 776 BC to send information to Athenians regarding the winners of various events at the Olympic Games of that year. According to other accounts, every athlete taking part in the first Olympic Games brought a homing pigeon from his village, and if he won his event, his pigeon would carry the news home. There was no dramatic invention here, just a practical response to a real, everyday frustration: news traveled agonizingly slowly, and everyone waiting back home hated that.

The problem being solved was really about time and distance. Before this, information could only move as fast as a person walking, running, or riding a horse. That was the hard ceiling on communication speed for basically all of human history up to that point. A pigeon didn't just improve on that, it broke the ceiling entirely, letting information travel faster than any person physically could.

The ripple effects of that shift lasted far longer than anyone at Olympia probably expected. Pigeon messaging didn't stay confined to sports results. The Romans used pigeon messengers to aid their military over 2000 years ago, and Julius Caesar reportedly used them during his conquest of Gaul. Centuries later, similar systems kept popping up wherever someone needed to move information fast across distance, from medieval empires to 19th century newsrooms to both World Wars, where pigeons carried messages from the front lines when radios were too risky or simply didn't work.

That's really the heart of how this changed communication: it planted the idea that distance didn't have to mean delay. Once people experienced faster communication, they never stopped chasing it, which is arguably a straight line from pigeons to semaphore towers to telegraph wires to everything we use today.

That said, it's worth being honest about the downsides, because there were real ones. A pigeon can only carry something small, a name, a number, maybe a short note, so this was never a system for detailed information. Weather, predators, and exhaustion could all kill a message mid flight with zero explanation, and the sender would have no idea whether their news ever landed. Maybe the biggest issue, though, was security: a rival or enemy could shoot down or intercept a pigeon just as easily as its intended recipient could catch it, meaning this "instant" communication system was never a private one.

Even with all that, it's kind of remarkable that a technology nobody set out to invent ended up shaping how humans thought about speed, distance, and connection for the next few thousand years

AI disclaimer: I used Claude AI to find sources and information for my EOTO project. From the in-depth prompt I gave Claude it was able to write me a script. I then used the script to format my presentation(slide 12-13) and added pictures to get my point across. From all of that I then had Claude write my blog post based on the edited script and using the sources it originally gave me. I edited the blog post and added pictures making it fit the blog style and format. Lastly I added links to make sure the readers could go deeper on some of the topics discussed.

Blog #6: Anti War Voices

 

Wow I am just in shock. How have I never heard of The American Conservative and Antiwar.com?

Before taking Communication Law and Ethics I would have assumed it was just a choice that the algorithm made based on my other searches but now I know it is much deeper than that. 

The government hates anti-war voices.

While these websites are not being shut down it is not a mistake or coincidence that they are not more main stream. Is the lack of exposer or popularity a form/result of censorship? Possibly.

Personally I don't want to give the government that much credit. I think a part of the problem is also the demographic and marketing. I feel like most young people are anti-war. We share our thoughts on social media or with our friends and peers locally. Yet these two websites have writers that are mainly older men. 

While successful in their respective field David Stockman, Karthik Sankaran, and Dieter Stein to name a few are business men, politicians, and researchers catering to their peers. Which means they are not marketing to the next generation of anti-war voices. Resulting in leaving out important and influential people that could aid their cause.

After looking on Instagram I found what I assumer is The American Conservative official account. To be honest I am not 100% sure. They are unvaried with a little over 4,000 followers and the most recent post being from 2024. This is NOT how you advertise and get the word out there about your company or your ideas. Trying to find an account for anti-war was even worse. The most I could find was city specific accounts but not one that was attached to Antiwar.com.

On the other hand it could be that since the writers have other professions than just journalists they know how the government operates. They could be protecting themselves and their respective companies and organizations from things like experiencing a chilling effect. 

Some of these individuals are very successful and have definitely been in the game a long time. They know that the government hates what they are doing. This lack of exposure and marketing could be a form of protection.

Privacy Online & Off

We like to think of privacy as something we control, a setting we can toggle on or off. But between the cameras on our streets and the apps on our phones, that control is more fragile than most of us realize. Privacy doesn't disappear in one dramatic moment. It disappears quietly, one camera, one contract, one data sale at a time.

Flock cameras show how complicated this gets. They genuinely help solve crimes, since license plate data has led police to suspects they might never have found otherwise. But that same tool is easy to abuse, and there have been cases of officers misusing camera access, along with people being accused of crimes based solely on footage without other evidence.

That raises real Fourth Amendment concerns, since tracking everyone's movements without a warrant or individualized suspicion undermines protection from unreasonable searches. The Fifth Amendment issue shows up when people are essentially forced to answer for accusations built on surveillance data rather than solid evidence and due process. 

A group of High Point University students is actually traveling to Washington this semester to lobby against these programs, which shows how alive this issue is right now.

The surveillance concerns go deeper than one camera brand. In her 2014 TED Talk, Catherine Crump points out that even small local police departments now have military-grade surveillance technology, and tools like license plate readers and cell tower tracking watch everyone, not just people suspected of crimes, on the theory the data might be useful someday. 

Ordinary people can end up in the same database as actual criminals, though some city councils have started passing laws requiring innocent people's data to be purged.

What's more surprising is how the government sidesteps constitutional limits through the state action doctrine. The Constitution only restrains the government, not private companies, a principle going back to the Civil Rights Cases of 1883. Because of this, the government doesn't need to violate your rights directly if a private company hands the information over instead. 

That's what happens with Palantir, which relies heavily on government contracts and supplies agencies with personal data, sidestepping the Fourth Amendment protections that would normally apply.

This same pattern shows up outside law enforcement too, often through a contract of adhesion, where one party holds all the power and you either accept the terms or don't use the service. I have seen the consequences firsthand. My dad started using Shein and Temu, and since then his debit card has been hit with fraud multiple times, forcing him to get a new card over and over.

The second TED Talk, added a more personal layer by comparing our digital footprint to tattoos, permanent markers that tell the world who we are. It used Greek mythology, like Sisyphus representing the endless work of managing your reputation, to make the point that in a digital world, nothing really disappears.

The government needs clearer limits on data collection, including closing the loophole that lets agencies buy data instead of collecting it directly. As individuals, reading terms of service, being cautious with payment information, and supporting local policy efforts like the one HPU students are pushing in D.C. won't make us invisible, but they put some choices back in our hands.

AI DISCLAIMER: The post was a collaboration using Claude AI. I took detailed notes while watching two TedTalks and listening to Professor Smith in class. There was active note taking and overall engagement from the class. In addition to facts that I learned, I emphasized my own reactions and opinions while watching and listening. I then asked Claude to help me improve the text by correcting grammar, spelling, punctuation. I then asked Claude to help me shape the text into a blog post format. After reviewing the text I added additional links, images, and captions.

Post #3: Speech Theories - Promote Tolerance

 

Out of the Eight Values of Free Expression I chose Promote Tolerance. I felt like this expression is one I see all the time especially on social media. As a college student I am always scrolling on TikTok and Instagram. I see people sharing their beliefs and opinions about politics, social issues, religion, and pretty much everything else. Most times thanks to my algorithm I agree with what I am hearing but other times I can't even understand how someone could think that way.

This is what made this topic so interesting to me. The idea of promoting tolerance is something we don't even think about but it is a value of expression protected by the first amendment. 

The First Amendment is a mechanism for participation in self-government. 

It gives people the ability to "talk back" to the government and share their opinions. Specifically social media has this even more noticeable and apart of our everyday life by giving people an instant platform to speck their minds and share their thoughts.

Everyone has something to say.

Lee Bollinger's The Tolerant Society takes this idea a step further. Bollinger argues that protecting extremist and offensive speech can help society become more tolerant. This does not mean that we should agree with hateful ideas. It means that being exposed to ideas we don't agree with can teach us how to handle disagreements. Basically creating the habit of tolerance while still acknowledging and knowing that it is wrong/hurtful.

Again social media is the perfect example of this. It is so easy to block someone, report their account, or attack them in the comments when they say something you don't like. Luckily that is our right just like them sharing their opinion is their right. The good thing is we can disagree and still communicate. Most times with hateful speech the government doesn't even have to chime in the public handles it especially in a forum like social media. The tolerance level changes and what is acceptable is shaped by the public.

Like we said in class the public and its opinion shapes the law and then the government follows. Not the other way around. Promoting Tolerance is no different, we the public shape the views that are excepted and what is hateful.