Thursday, April 11 — Timeline entries are due Send me your Gmail address if you haven’t already Post your own timeline with your entries on your own blog. Submit that link on Canvas under the Timeline assignment Copy your timeline entries from your timeline spreadsheet to the class timeline spreadsheet (which I’ll invite you to …
When I signed up for history of the information age last semester, I was not entirely sure what I was getting myself into. I believed the class would primarily be about computers and the impact that they have had on…
This was a fun class!
I felt as though we covered a lot of information of the twentieth and early twenty-first century history that comprise the Information Age. Some key takeaways from the course for me: Early on we discussed what we …
Condensing an entire semester-long course’s worth of learning into a single blog post is no easy feat–especially when the course in question covers such a broad time period and reflects the interdisciplinary nature of the history of the Information Age. However, I can definitely identify two main general concepts that have emerged from what I’ve […]
Out of all the assigned readings for this final week of formal classes–during which I thoroughly enjoyed co-leading our class discussion–the Newitz article in particular caught my eye. The author’s thesis that the current Information Age will give way to a new “infrastructure age”–where modern information technology will be incorporated into the physical structures that […]
Out of all the topics we are discussing this week, the subject of corporate activism is the most interesting to me. In the Music and Society course I am taking this semester, we have discussed the commodification of certain genres of music that once served as honest reflections of class, racial, economic, social, and political […]
This week’s discussion of truth in the Digital Age is incredibly relevant to my final project (see my description of my topic from last week’s post here). Additionally, citations hold a special place in my heart as a History major and UMW Writing Center consultant –especially Chicago/Turabian Style. The concept of sensationalizing or even outright […]
First off, I would just like to comment on the infographic–I had never before considered smoke signals to be a form of telecommunication, but upon further reflection they certainly fulfill the same general purpose. In the Hood and Duffy article I was intrigued by the description of “moral disengagement” as it relates to my work […]
The Schmitz article’s assertion that “pop culture and American media are inextricably linked” mentions how mass media has served to help promote various cultural icons throughout history using technology to disseminate information. The article’s discussion of “tastemakers” reminded me of today’s social media “influencers;” people like the Kardashians, whose tastes in music and fashion–and their […]
The creation of communication networks such as the Internet represents a fundamental example of Downey’s assertion that “just as sociotechnical systems are inevitable socially produced (brought into being by a myriad of social actors), they are also inevitable socially constructed (imbued with political and cultural meaning by social actors)” (6). While its forerunner ARPANET was […]
First of all, I just wanted to remark on how interesting it was to see Babbage’s “difference engine” in action; I had heard about Babbage for years but never actually seen his famous machine in action. I had often heard Lovelace’s name mentioned along with Babbage’s–albeit often mentioned after his, since the male-dominant gendered politics […]