The theme of our project was the influence of technology of the past on today's world. Technology is constantly evolving and becoming a newer product of improvement, efficiency, and practicality. Technology never emerges at random. It always reveals underlying correlations to inventions from history's past. In this project, we studied the roots of today's technology. When looking at modern computers, cell phones, and CD players, we see direct correspondence to bulky and inconvenient products from our past. The US have reached such a milestone in technological advancements, and I believe its a key feature of our nation. We set the bar for the rest of the world and I believe its something admirable and worth dedicating our project to. In addition, the most drastic improvement has been in communication. Now our world is constantly interconnected through use of cell phones, computers, online chats (skype, aim), facebook, twitter, email, etc. Technology has opened up a whole new world of communication for our country. Now we can consistently keep in touch with family and friends all across our entire world. It's really quite conspicuous how united our nation has become. Technology of the past has become the roots for all we've become today, and is an indispensable aspect of our daily life.
When choosing our items we kept two important things in mind. First, we wanted to make sure we chose items that had a large influence on technology today. Secondly, we wanted to select items representing communication. Some examples of the items we chose were floppy disks. They illustrated both how CDs were based off these floppy disks and how they helped open up communication. Another item we chose was a vinyl disk. It had discernible effects on today's CD players and ipods. In addition, it opened up communication during that era with the growing disillusionment of government and advances in civil rights. Through music, artists were able to express their opinions with the general public. Some other items we chose included tapes, a computer mouse, a pager, and an old cell phone.
To obtain these items, we each looked to older members of our family for assistance. For example, I contacted my grandfather in Connecticut and talked to him about technology of the 1970's and what being apart of that era was like. He was able to give me personal knowledge that I would not be able to find in a textbook. He also sent me some of the items we used. In addition, Ms. Sanderson helped our group by providing a pager from that period. Some of the other members talked to parents and were able to obtain things found around the house. Lastly, I attended a garage sale where I found the vinyl disk we used. Through various tactics, we were able to come together and pull items from various sources.
If I were to do this project again, there are definitely things I would do differently. I feel like we came to class more than prepared. However, I wish we had been more creative with putting together our box. Everything seemed too organized, almost too perfect. I loved how some groups made there projects big and showed artistic creativity. Although our box was organized, neat, and colorful, I felt like it was lacking in originality.
My advice to next year's classes would be to create the box before hand. It's far too difficult to wait until the last minute to put that product together. It only puts your group in a stressful situation that could have easily been prevented.
In conclusion, I feel this project really helped bring history to life. It also gave us the chance to work as a collegial effort. It gave us the freedom to choose a topic of our interest and work hard towards producing creative final project.
-Madeleine Traver
