The rise of Instagram in the 21st century

Instagram is known as a "Silicon Valley Fairy Tale" as it rose in popularity in just a few short months after only needing an initial eight weeks to develop the app. In what was a very quick year and a half, Facebook bought the app in cash for $1 billion, plus stock. The idea for Instagram originated in 2009 by Kevin Systrom, and was created in 2010 after acquiring capital from a couple of men at a startup party in Silicon Valley. Instagram, which was called Burbn at the time, was an app that allowed users to check-in, post plans, and caption photos, similar to app tycoon Facebook.

Before its 2010 launch, however, Systrom, his capital investors, and partner Mike Krieger reassessed Burbn and decided to only focus on the mobile photo's aspect of the app. This is when they also chose to rename the app to Instagram. On launch day, October 6, 2010, the app gained 25,000 downloads and became the top free photo-sharing app on the app store. Within one week they achieved 100,000 downloads and surpassed a million by December.

Within the next year, Instagram acquired millions from investors and was approached by many with offers to buy the company, but it wasn't until April of 2012 that Instagram was sold to Facebook and become the app that we now know many variations of today.

Instagram received loads of backlash for its partnership with Facebook, with people believing the apps were going to become to similar and that Facebook was going to take over the internet as well as people's private lives. However, Instagram has found its way in all the chaos and has become an extremely prominent app for anyone who just wants to share photos with their friends and families, all the way to those who use the app as a full-time job of sharing their thoughts, ideas, and influence with their followers. Some believe Instagram will die off in the next decade as "influencers" take over the app, but many still find it a light-hearted and slightly addicting way to get their daily photo fix.

The advancements of the typewriter and its effects on present day

During the roar of production in the 19th century, many large and monotonous products and machines were invented or at least attempted for creation. These inventions had a large scope of uses, but most were around the size of a piano and were just as heavy. One invention, however, strayed from the mold that all others had been following. This is the creation of the typewriter, brought forth in 1867 by Christopher Sholes. His patented model came out in 1868 and wrote far faster than a pen could, and after a few years of updating the machine, he signed a contract with Remington & Sons in 1873 for manufacturing. In 1874 the new Remington, the first name put out to represent the typewriter, was added to the market. At this time, the machines could produce about 1,000 characters per minute. It wasn't long before people were using Remingtons to produce content, as Mark Twain was the first author to purchase one and submit a fully typewritten book manuscript.

Mark Twain depicted with a typewriter.

At this time, the typewriter still had some major flaws in it, including the lack of a shift key. The machines wrote in all-caps until 1878 when the Remington model 2 came out and included a shift key, which alerted the machine whether to use the lowercase or uppercase letters that had been added to each bar. As time progressed, typewriters became more and more advanced as new models proved to be quicker, quieter, and eventually, electric. 

Thomas Edison created the first electrically powered typewriter in 1872, which was then adapted and made into an office machine by James Smathers in 1920. During this time, typewriters grew in popularity and became a regular machine in the workplace. A quick 40 years later, the International Business Machines Corporation put the first-ever commercial typewriter on the market, allowing anyone to become a writer. Now that these machines were in the average household, it was time to continue making them innovative. 

The 20th century was all about making the typewriters better. By 1909, the first successful portable typewriter appeared on the market. Prior to this, portables were slow, awkward, and lacked convenience. Quickly enough, by the 1950s, pretty much all typewriter manufacturers had a portable option for their customers. 

As typewriters adapted more throughout the 20th century, they became the common day composing machine. From there, the typewriter sparked the idea for the creation of highspeed printers, which could produce up to 100,000 characters per minute, a huge advancement from its ancestor machines back in the 1800s. Today, millions upon millions of pages are printed daily with trillions of words on them, all of which is thanks to the clunky, slow machine produced over 150 years ago. 

Joaquin Phoenix deserves more than just an Oscar

At the 2020 Oscar's event held on February 9, many incredible talents and faces were awarded titles for their hard work in cinema. During the ceremony, it was clear that these winners were given an exceptionally short amount of time this year to present their speech to the 29.6M viewers. Some, like Brad Pitt, who won Best Supporting Actor for his role in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, shed light on his quick amount of speech time by saying "they told me I only have 45 seconds up here" before he quickly discussed his views on the current political climate of the United States. Despite the narrowly allotted time given to these winners, many others like Brad Pitt still wanted to use their voice to speak to those out there watching.

Joaquin Phoenix, winner of the 2020 Best Male Actor role for his part as the Joker in Joker, stole the show with his brilliantly reasonable call to action to each of us on planet Earth. Phoenix discussed animal rights and how they should be in our circle of moral concern. His speech was powerful, intelligent, and full of genuine yearning for not only the animals we share our space with but for the humans too that don't find this topic to be important.



Phoenix harps on the fact that as actors and performers in the public eye, they should be using their presence to spread awareness about crucial topics and so good for our planet and those on it who need the help. To put his claims to the test, Phoenix has been giving different call-to-action speeches at award ceremonies recently and has covered a great variety of issues such as climate change at the Golden Globes and systemic racism in the acting community at the BAFTA awards just one week prior to the Oscar's.

I think what Phoenix is doing is absolutely fantastic and blatantly overdo in the entertainment industry. Some other actors, like Lady Gaga and Oprah, do use their voice to preach wellness and discuss important issues to the public eye, but Phoenix making it clear that more need to be doing it and they need to start now is beautiful and necessary for this new decade. His ideas are sharp and his words are well-calculated, so I am very happy to be seeing this taking place this year. To read more about Phoenix's specific speech at the 2020 Oscar's, click here.

US takes advanced precautions to protect against coronavirus

China's Wuhan coronavirus has now taken over 300 lives and infected more than 16,000 people across the world, since its discovery in December 2019. With cases now popping up in many countries outside of Asia, officials are beginning to take action to avoid the spreading of this terrible disease. As of Sunday, February 2nd, The United States is denying entry to any foreign national who has visited China in the past 14 days. According to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, these restrictions also apply to any US citizen who has been in China's Hubei province, where the outbreak originated, in the past two weeks. Once these citizens do return to the US, they are subject to quarantine up to 14 days long, as well as a health screening upon reentry. 

These precautions are being taken by the US and other countries in order to contain the virus as much as possible so as to avoid an international crisis. Aside from these steps being taken at borders, the internet has been feverishly discussing ways to keep the coronavirus from spreading. Many news outlets, Twitter/Facebook/Instagram accounts, and YouTube videos are being put out describing ways to minimalize the spread of germs and how to keep a safe distance from those who are experiencing illness symptoms. At the current point in time, according to US national security adviser Robert O'Brien, "right now there is no reason for Americans to panic...this is something that is a low risk, we think, in the US." So, with that being said, this is a great time to be learning and practicing how to stay healthy and stop the spread of airborne pathogens. 

I think it's great that at this time, whether fueled by fear or just to stay proactive, people are truly trying to exercise health precautions. This virus has quickly exceeded many records when it comes to spreading and taking lives, so it's important that we work now to educate and share the word on how to prevent it from reaching the lives of individuals both in and outside the US. This is one situation where joining the communities of the internet to discuss and inform the public on these matters proves to be a very good choice to make.

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