The military has developed many technologies for the purpose of waging war and for intelligence purposes, many of which have been integrated into civilian life. Yet, the question of what role the military plays in controlling these technologies has always been an issue. The readings for this week discussed encryption during World War II, modern
The first reading of this week was “As We May Think” by Vannevar Bush. This article focused on discussing how the concept/idea behind technology is often developed years even decades before the innovation is developed. Charles Babbage had the idea/concept for his arithmetical machine but was not able to fully develop it because the cost …
Typically when thinking of STEM fields, we tend to think of men working in these fields more so than women. Computer science was no different…..or so we thought! Jennifer Light’s article sheds light on just how many women were working as human computers, during the war especially. Yet, despite the
On Tuesday we focused on early computers. I was really surprised to learn such an extensive history on the computer. Prior to this class, I’d never learned about Charles Babbage. When I thought about the history of computers, I never thought the…
It was interesting reading about the contribution of women in computing in Jennifer Light’s article “When computers were women”. It was interesting to learn about how women had to become “computers” during World War II with the ENIAC electronic computer but did not receive historical credit for their work. It is unsurprising that recorded history […]
This week in the History of the Information Age, we have been discussing the rise of early computers in the 1950s, the role of human creativity and imagination in scientific advancement, as well as our own personal experiences with early computing. The Future Is Now! (As Imagined in Yesterday) To begin our Week 9 discussion,… Read More HIST 427: The Future is Now – As Imagined in Yesterday
The readings for this week centered on two major themes: the unrecognized role of women in the creation of computers and early theorization of how modern computers would serve people before they were even created. The video demonstration of Charles Babbage’s engine mentioned that Ada Lovelace was inspired by his engine and used it to
The genre of silent film has always been somewhat of an enigma to me. I knew very little of the technical production requirements and practically nothing of its history. That being said, this project seemed very daunting to me at first. Luckily, both Andrew and Kyle had experience with the filming, the green screen, and …
The day we all lost connectivity and didn’t notice that the world was coming to an end.
My group created our silent film based off of Mary Washington yearbooks from 1916-1998. We were inspired by the idea of recreating different scenes in the book. There were particular photos we chose to include such as typewriters, video games, and old…