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--- 325:questions:week_12_questions_comments-325_19 [2019/11/14 03:56] – lblouch
+++ 325:questions:week_12_questions_comments-325_19 [2019/11/14 15:33] (current) – jsweetak
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 I found it interesting that they decided to advertise electric appliances to children. I guess the idea would be that the kids would see how much easier this family lived with their new appliances, that they would go home and tell their moms and dads about it. I find it interesting because you would think that the key target audience would be the women of the home. -- Erin Madden
+Throughout chapter 6, Nye illustrates how the popularized of electricity impacted American households. Family's now had access to multiple types utilizes that they never had before. It was interesting to me to see not only how electricity changed the items in households, but also the social change that took place. Because homes no longer had to be designed around the fireplace, houses now had much more flexibility in their floorplans. Among other things this change impacted the way typical families interacted with each other. - Jack Sweetak
 This reading introduced an interesting idea to me, which is the concept that technological advancements have always been widely accepted in the business and industrial sphere of Aamerican life it moving into the domestic sphere was seen as “invading” the household. This made me think back to other accounts of development and how society responded. In almost all cases technology has been perceived as a sign of wealth and class. This has caused a constant competition between consumers which is great for manufacturers but could be seen as problematic within the household. Electricity may have been hesitantly accepted at first but after sometime Americans found themselves wanting to adopt these advancements as a sign of wealth and acceptance into society. -Emma Monaghan
+In Chapter 6 of Nye, electricity is described with the 1930s passage on page 238: ““Electricity, the Silent Servant in the Home.” It describes “Mrs. Modern Woman” who was in her kitchen an electric toaster, electric coffee maker, electric refrigerator, electric egg boiler, and electric mixer, which together make breakfast effortless. Her son, “Bob Modern Boy,” operates the “new electric dish-washer”; “Ann Modern Girl” uses the new electric vacuum cleaner; and “Mr. Modern Man…decides that he will use the electric floor-waxer that very day after his return from work.” While he is away, “Mrs. Modern Woman” is not exhausted on “Monday, which has long been the proverbially blue wash-day of the week, for Electricity, the silent servant in the home, has done much to make the day just as enjoyable as any other day of the week.”” The reference to Monday as Laundry Day parallels the discussion on the 12th of November, which we had about the evolution of the washing machine. The devices mentioned above were advertised as being “labor-saving,” but rather than freeing housewives and children from housework, they simply towed the line on preexisting gender roles despite reducing the amount of physical exertion. – Rachel Beatty.
+The impact that electricity had on everyday American life is fascinating to read about in retrospective. Virtually every aspect of American life began to be electrified in some way, from kitchen appliances to toys to the very clothing people wore. Americans' obsessions with electricity was almost religious to an extent, and it's honestly not hard to see why. To suddenly have access to this invisible force of nature that could do anything from bring light to the house to practically do all the cooking for you must have almost seem like some sort of divine intervention, a new power granted to Americans to make their lives and there country better than it ever had been before, even if people did know that this was all actually explainable by science. With this in mind, it's easy to see why American's went slightly overboard for a while with the amount of electricity they were using.
+- Michael Dietrich
+In Chapter 6 of Nye’s book discussion of appliances being advertised towards women really stood out to me. Reflecting on the evolution of advertisements from the late 1980’s into now nearly 2020, plenty of things have been marketed towards children, but I can’t immediately recall any appliances being advertised towards children. -Elizabeth Davis
+“Electricity enhanced and transformed the everyday, changing the familiar into something rare and strange.”(Page 245) This quote I think is very true about this entire reading. I thought it was really interesting reading about the electrification of the home and the different ways that it was integrated and shown off for all to see. Electricity and the light bulb brought forth an entire new way of living and I would never have known this without this reading. I think one really interesting part to this was also on page 245 about the electrification of the Christmas tree. I never really thought about how something so casual for us now was even part of the electrification of america. This shows that how something so simple in the house with the addition of light could become something so transformed and new. I really enjoyed this reading and learning about how much of an impact this idea of light was such a huge thing in a time I never really thought of before. -Tory Martin
 ====== Pursell, 116-143 ======
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 In this writing by Rachel Maines, she focused on the history behind sexuality with women, mainly bringing an understanding to the 'social camouflage' brought about with "electromechanical vibrators" or other sex toys. She states that 'social camouflage' is "the idea that technologies are socially constructed (p116). Maines states, "Certain commodities are sold in the legal marketplace for which the accepted use is either illegal or socially unacceptable" (p117).  Another example of how products that have a 'social camouflage' are tobacco pipes. Though they are made for the purpose of smoking tobacco, it has now been changed socially to where a lot of people are using them to consume illegal drugs instead. It is interesting to think of all of the other products that have changed perceptions because of the social change. -Nick Bass
+In the Electromechanical Vibrator Section of Nye (pg. 116-143), Nye analyzes the history of the original electric sex toy. The electric vibrator is part of the story of women’s sexual liberation and was created to rectify what was at the time referred to as “women’s complaints,” which was a euphemism for the buildup of sexual energy in the woman’s genitals, and was believed to cause “female hysteria,” which was named for the Greek word for uterus, and it was first believed to be indicated by a “wandering uterus,” anxiety, thoughts of sex, loss of appetite, etc. Until the turn of the 20th century, it was believed in both Europe and America that females did not experience sexual desire or pleasure and were merely the organic dumping grounds for male lust and for the most part, were obliged to mate with their husbands to grant them their sexual wishes and have children, and when females displayed signs of erotic fantasy or sexual forwardness, doctors attributed this to “mental illness” and women “diagnosed” with female hysteria often ended up in insane asylums at the behest of their families and at the mercy of abuse from male physicians. – Rachel Beatty.
+I found it interesting that the section brought together those 3 different aspects that don’t have a lot of history to be talked about in the first place but there are very important to the technology that we have today involving sexuality, women, and “social camouflage” of technology. We have to remember that gender was being used more often as a sort of “lens” to the view that is “sexuality.” – Hunter Dykhuis
 ===== Maines, Socially Camouflaged Technologies =====