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week_10_questions_comments-325_25 [2025/10/30 10:17] – [Readings from Smith and Clancy (Include title of reading you are commenting on)] 76.78.172.130week_10_questions_comments-325_25 [2025/10/30 13:26] (current) – [Ruth Cowan, Social History of American Technology] 199.111.65.11
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 Having read "Colonial Radio Saves Wasted Motion" from 1934 was a very interesting read considering the time it took place.  By '34, the US is in the grips of the Great Depression and money is tight.  This company, Colonial Radio, seems to be not only employing women into the workforce, unique for the time, but also training them so that they wouldn't use wasted motion in their work.  Compared to other lessons about factory work, where the companies could better hire workforce that is untrained and unskilled, this group focuses on training them for a bit on how to better build these radios, which could apparently translate to being used outside the workforce.  - David Y. Having read "Colonial Radio Saves Wasted Motion" from 1934 was a very interesting read considering the time it took place.  By '34, the US is in the grips of the Great Depression and money is tight.  This company, Colonial Radio, seems to be not only employing women into the workforce, unique for the time, but also training them so that they wouldn't use wasted motion in their work.  Compared to other lessons about factory work, where the companies could better hire workforce that is untrained and unskilled, this group focuses on training them for a bit on how to better build these radios, which could apparently translate to being used outside the workforce.  - David Y.
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 +For the reading on “How Electricity Effects Economy in the Home” from 1917, I was intrigued by its assumption that electricity would automatically make all aspects of family life far better despite it not really providing any real data on this. I would love to do more research into the electric toys that supposedly provide children with “instructive merits” that will keep them from “blind alley” jobs when they grow older, since this is quite a huge claim to make. - Noah Rutkowski
  
 ====== Ruth Cowan, Social History of American Technology ====== ====== Ruth Cowan, Social History of American Technology ======
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 Cowan challenges the comforting narrative that household technology automatically lightened women’s work. She shows that while innovations like washing machines and vacuum cleaners changed how housework was done, they didn’t necessarily make it easier or shorter. Instead, they raised expectations for cleanliness and reinforced the idea that domestic labor was primarily women’s responsibility. What I find most powerful is how Cowan exposes this hidden form of industrialization the home becoming a private “factory” run by unpaid labor. For me, this reading highlights how technology can transform social norms as much as it changes physical work. The modern appliances that promised freedom actually deepened dependence on gendered labor divisions, just in more efficient ways. Cowan’s analysis reminds us that progress is never purely mechanical it’s cultural and moral, built into the assumptions about who should benefit from new machines and who is expected to serve them. - Todd Holman Cowan challenges the comforting narrative that household technology automatically lightened women’s work. She shows that while innovations like washing machines and vacuum cleaners changed how housework was done, they didn’t necessarily make it easier or shorter. Instead, they raised expectations for cleanliness and reinforced the idea that domestic labor was primarily women’s responsibility. What I find most powerful is how Cowan exposes this hidden form of industrialization the home becoming a private “factory” run by unpaid labor. For me, this reading highlights how technology can transform social norms as much as it changes physical work. The modern appliances that promised freedom actually deepened dependence on gendered labor divisions, just in more efficient ways. Cowan’s analysis reminds us that progress is never purely mechanical it’s cultural and moral, built into the assumptions about who should benefit from new machines and who is expected to serve them. - Todd Holman
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 +It doesn't really surprise me that when new technology is being pushed to help advance humanity, it's going to be met with an opposite force pushing back due to concerns or desires to use traditional methods.  Looking at the sphygmomanometer is a prime example, yet Cowan also made an excellent point about how traditional methods could have some faults as well, especially with how different people are.  (Btw, I remember learning about reading pulses with the finger method.) - David Y.
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 +I honestly found this reading to be one of the most interesting ones from the entire semester so far. I loved the discussion of how religion and colonization impacted views on what counts as “natural,” and I found their application to technology to be fascinating in their contradictions and limitations. Since I’m an English major, I’ve only ever looked at Romanticism through the lens of literature, but I really liked getting to see its wider effects on attitudes about technology over time. - Noah Rutkowski
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 +This reading highlights how technological change is never purely about machines but by its social systems that shape and are shaped by those machines. Her analysis shows that domestic technologies, like washing machines or refrigerators, didn't actually reduce women's labor as much as they changed its nature, reflecting deeper cultural expectations about gender and work. This connects to our class theme by illustrating that technology often reinforces existing social structures rather than automatically creating progress or equality.-- Caitlyn Edwards
 ====== Nye, 133-137 ====== ====== Nye, 133-137 ======
  
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 This chapter talked about the transformation of transportation, and their effect on the transformation of American cities. I thought it was interesting how overtime, many people came to prefer more individual modes of transportation, but now when we look back on it, many Americans want to return to more widespread public transport. - Abby Firestone This chapter talked about the transformation of transportation, and their effect on the transformation of American cities. I thought it was interesting how overtime, many people came to prefer more individual modes of transportation, but now when we look back on it, many Americans want to return to more widespread public transport. - Abby Firestone
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 +The Steamboat excelled against traditional paths, the Railroads excelled against Steamboats, and Trolley Lines grew to better move people in closer areas that Railroads didn't.  When the automobile came around, it helped gave people more flexibility and mobility to places that other methods couldn't do.  What interested me in the reading was how people didn't think the automobile wouldn't surpass the streetcar at all.  It likely was due to the early designs, expenses and unreliability of these early models, but when better models like the Ford Model T comes around, it spelt the end of the growing streetcar empire.  - David Y.
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