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325:questions:week_2_questions_comments-325_17

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325:questions:week_2_questions_comments-325_17 [2019/09/02 17:45] – [Readings from Pursell] 76.78.225.237325:questions:week_2_questions_comments-325_17 [2019/09/04 18:51] (current) – [Judith McGaw, "So Much Depends..."] kjenkin3
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 I admire what McGaw is attempting to do in dissecting the way that historians and history students learn about technological innovation. McGaw makes the observation on page 13 that we focus on “famous firsts” as opposed to evaluating how technology evolves over time. **I agree that historians have a tendency to generalize the behavior of different societies over the course of time. While generalizations can be useful to get a snapshot of a particular era, they can be misleading if that information is used to dictate the bigger picture.** For this reason, I thought that McGaw did the correct thing in deciding that there is no representative farm. This helped her come to the conclusion after her analysis of probate inventories that technological diversity is what paved the way for nineteenth-century technological innovation. -Yousef Nasser I admire what McGaw is attempting to do in dissecting the way that historians and history students learn about technological innovation. McGaw makes the observation on page 13 that we focus on “famous firsts” as opposed to evaluating how technology evolves over time. **I agree that historians have a tendency to generalize the behavior of different societies over the course of time. While generalizations can be useful to get a snapshot of a particular era, they can be misleading if that information is used to dictate the bigger picture.** For this reason, I thought that McGaw did the correct thing in deciding that there is no representative farm. This helped her come to the conclusion after her analysis of probate inventories that technological diversity is what paved the way for nineteenth-century technological innovation. -Yousef Nasser
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 +I think that McGaw's approach to technology is a very interesting one. By evaluating many counties in several states we see the different varieties of tools and methods that the settlers used to get through day to day life. I also love the discussion about the diversity of tool ownership between counties due to different needs. For instance McGaw stated that Burlington and Hunterdon counties were least likely to own axes as plows, while in York and Westmoreland were far more likely too.(pg.25) This was intriguing to me because even though they are neighboring states the tools they have and the methods that they use to harness them are widely different. Ultimately this demonstrates the degree of change that the United States was going through in this time period.
 +-Kendell Jenkins
  
 I found it that McGaw's research into the fact that most farmers lacked some of the tools we would take for granted or expect that a farmer to own to lead to "reveal eighteenth-century Mid-Atlantic farmers to have been a distinctly innovative lot."(Pursell, 24). Which brought to mind of a discussion about the purpose of fences in another class, in which fences in terms of farming were used more to keep animals out of the fields rather than in them to protect the crops. - Laurabeth Downs  I found it that McGaw's research into the fact that most farmers lacked some of the tools we would take for granted or expect that a farmer to own to lead to "reveal eighteenth-century Mid-Atlantic farmers to have been a distinctly innovative lot."(Pursell, 24). Which brought to mind of a discussion about the purpose of fences in another class, in which fences in terms of farming were used more to keep animals out of the fields rather than in them to protect the crops. - Laurabeth Downs 
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