Author: Eliza

Thoughts on Dolphins Being Thrown on Tables

I really enjoyed this week’s discussion on coffeehouses and the origin of the printing press and postal system. I particularly liked the references to dolphins being thrown onto tables, it made for a pretty entertaining class. In regards to the material we had to look at this week, I found the Coffeehouse TedTalk interesting particularly when the speaker mentioned near the end that he feels as though socialization today is not as face to face. While I do agree with the sentiment that it is not solely face to face, I personally disagreed with this notion a bit. While I completely agree that coffeehouses are not used in the same way they were back in the 17th and 18th centuries, I don’t think that socialization today is not as face to face. Despite online forums and the ability to communicate online, I still find that a majority of my interactions happen in person. Especially because some conversations translate better when speaking in person rather than online. I know this wasn’t a huge part of our discussion, but I just found what the speaker said to be a bit biased. It reminded me of how older people today say, “It’s those dang phones!” and criticize the use of modern technology.

As for Cowan’s article, I enjoyed reading about the build up to coffeehouses and the debates surrounding them in regards to academia. We discussed this in class, but I definitely saw parallels between how university officials felt threatened by coffeehouse’s and wanted to keep academia “prestigious” and how universities today have a huge paywall to ensure not everyone can have access to a higher education. As for other class discussions I enjoyed this week, I thought tying in the printing press was a smart choice since Cowan mentioned how “the coffeehouse is rightly associated primarily with print and scribal publications.” The printing press also brought up a great talk about how institutions want to keep claim to certain titles and not be proven wrong. For instance, how the British Library has the Gutenberg Bible and refuses to claim it was not the first book created with a printing press, despite evidence that there were other printed books before it. Overall, I was thoroughly engaged with class discussion this week.

Works Cited

Cowan, Brian. The Social Life of Coffee : The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. (87)

TEDxTalks. “The Lost World of the London Coffeehouse | Dr Matthew Green | Tedxeastend.” YouTube. YouTube, February 22, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_83A7vaHTiE.

Thoughts on Downey and Gleick

Downey’s book Technology and Communication in American History was an interesting read. I enjoyed how it was laid out with each chapter about a new period of technological advancement. During the first chapter and woven throughout some of the later text, Downey mentions sociotechnical (Downey, 5). The sociotechnical theory is recognizing how technology is improved and understood through human usage. I enjoyed how Downey used this theory in order to frame the history he was discussing because I agree that a large part of understanding technological advancement is knowing how humans interacted with previous technologies and how that evolved into what we see today. It makes me reflect on chapter 2 of Gleick’s book about how writing advanced throughout time. For instance, he mentions that the 20th century had a revival of orality seen with technology such as the telephone (Gleick, 48). When looking at the idea of reviving orality, I think it makes sense given human’s desire for more convenient and accessible forms of communication. Therefore, a natural progression from letter writing was to have a way to communicate long distances with speech.

Another aspect from Downey I enjoyed was his mention that photography is a form of communication. I find visual mediums, aside from writing, are overlooked as ways to convey something, but art, dance, music, and photography can all have meaning and messages behind them that make them a more abstract form of communication. Downey also mentioned how inventions being patented by companies have caused America to have extreme competition with innovation, and I like the relevancy of this information. Today you have companies, such as Apple, that are constantly trying to outdo older products each year in order to keep consumers wanting to buy more of the “latest technology.” From our class discussion, I liked how we broke down each chapter as groups and figured out the main idea, or thesis, of each chapter. I think determining the conclusion’s thesis was great at capturing the underlying theme throughout the book: “Communication technology has always been faced with competing demands because we expect a lot from our infrastructures of communication, which must continue to properly function for public interest while still being profitable.”

Works Cited:

Downey, Gregory J. Technology and Communication in American History. Washington, DC: American Historical Association, 2011.

Gleick, James. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. New York: Pantheon Books, 2011.

TimelineJS

ARTH 260R: One Florentine Thing Timeline

Favorite Proposed Assignments

I would love to do an oral history assignment. My thoughts on how to go about an oral history assignment would be to either lead an oral history interview, maybe look at the guidelines outlined by the Library of Congress on how to conduct said interview. Another way to do this assignment could be to look at oral history archives and maybe analyze one of our choosing. Out of the assignments proposed by the class, my favorite two are taking an old form of communication and modifying it into modern-day form. I feel like that assignment can be done in multiple ways, from writing a descriptive short essay to displaying a 3D model of the technology and how it would be modified. Other methods could be what was listed as examples such as radio being turned into a podcast series. I also like the idea of helping out with the alumni display. Furthermore, not to be biased towards myself but I would really like to do the advertisement idea. For the advertisement idea, it would consist of looking at advertisements during the time a piece of technology was created. Then after seeing how that form of technology was advertised we would come up with our own physical or online advertisement of the technology and write a short reflection as to our design process.

Broad Bands

The first introduction I read was Chapter 1 of Broad Bands by Claire L. Evans. I thoroughly enjoyed this introduction, especially since I was not expecting such an emphasis on how women aided in the beginnings of computing and making mathematical advancements toward having a machine such as the computer. Evans approaches the History of the Information Age by starting with when the word “computer” was first introduced in the late 1800s and discusses the chronology as more of a story. From this point, she focuses on women, particularly Ada King’s impact on the beginnings of the computing age. I thoroughly loved focusing on the women trailblazers since the credit for inventions is usually given to men. However, Ada was able to make her mark by writing some of the first “computer code” and helping the Analytical Engine seem more plausible, despite the full piece never being physically created. I also liked this quote in particular that captures the way women were limited by societal expectations, but still had goals and aspirations despite what was expected of them, “her [Ada’s] letters…reveal a woman consumed by the crippling fear that she might not have the opportunity to make her mark on mathematics.”

The Cybernetics Movement

The second introduction I read was the introduction to The Cybernetics Movement by Ronald R. Kline. I thought this was an interesting introduction and provided a different perspective on the Information Age compared to Evans’s introduction. The main idea of this introduction chapter was that the creation and field of Cybernetics is what marked the rise of Information Theory in the U.S. after WWII. However, its peak did not appear until the 1950s and 60s with the field combining disciplines such as “biology, engineering, the social sciences, and popular culture.” While Kline makes note that he “does not engage in debates about…whether previous information ages existed” or what is defined as being a part of an information age, he instead looks at what is believed to be a part of an information age and why. His approach to discussing this era of technological advancements is done by explaining the information very straightforwardly. While I preferred Evans’s approach to using more of a storytelling narrative, I still found the information Kline gave to be interesting and I did like the accreditation of women who worked in these more male-dominant technological fields.

Class Ideas

Based on the readings, one idea that came to mind of what we could do this semester is look at the way new technological advances were advertised. It would be cool if we turned the advertisements into an assignment in which we had to come up with an ad for a form of technology. I would also love to delve into learning more about the women that impacted this field, specifically of the human “computers” that were predominately women.

Citations

Evans, Claire L. Broad Bands. Alberta: Portfolio/Penguin, 2018. (Pg. 17)

Kline, Ronald R. The Cybernetics Movement. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. (Pg. 5-6)

Clarendon, Dan. “10 of the Greatest Women Empowerment Anthems to Keep on Repeat.” US Weekly, June 19, 2019. https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/10-women-empowerment-anthems-beyonce-ariana-grande-more/.

Hello! Welcome to my subdomain for HIST 427. I’m Eliza, a junior Historic Preservation major, and Digital Studies minor. I’m really grateful to be in this class as my Digital Studies capstone course. I’m mainly excited to see how the Information Age will be defined throughout this course. Furthermore, I’m looking forward to applying my knowledge from my DGST101 class to the assignments we’ll be doing in this course. Based on the previous courses, I liked how 2011’s was set up. I know it’s the oldest course website, but the information seemed clearer and more condensed than some other sites. As for a project I like, I’m fond of the short documentary assignment. My favorite piece of advice from the 2014 class is to “be realistic about the assignments you create. You will have to actually do them. The more specific you can be about the details, the better your project is likely to turn out.” I liked this piece of advice since it’s true that you need to make sure your project ideas are feasible and not too unobtainable to complete.