Chapter one was about Leonardo Da Vinci as and Johann Gutenberg as inventors, and huge cultural shift for producing technology during the dark ages as a result of the invention of the printing press. Da Vinci had many technological “dreams” that he could not produce as a result of the lack of technological advances. Once Joann Gutenburg invented the printing press the speed of information dissemination radically changed and allowed inventors to share information. Furthermore, the court system made knowledge assessible to the population with print contracts for royal bulletin, university texts, and political propaganda, and the royals influenced the general population in receiving the knowledge by creating social trends.Significant impact on technology, vastly more and radically fast and reduced cost of books. In this sense, infromation sharing through the printing press became profitable and technology could advance at faster speeds.
Chapter two is about The Dutch Golden, the expansion of commence and international trading, and capitalism motivated technological change. Louis De Geer (1587–1652) was an industrialist and considered the father of Swedish industry because of his mining and engineering advances in technology. The Dutch revolutized trading with new technology for ships, international trading traffic routes, a self sustaining fish hatchery, sugar labor force in Brazil and Atlantic slave trade, new banking policies with money exchanges instead of a paper promise, and a barter system including pottery, flowers, textiles, and several types of foods and livestock. Dutch capitalism motivation technological advances and in turn revolutionized the world’s society and culture of commerce and utilizing international goods.
Chapter three discusses Great Britain’s industrial economical growth with the start of the first industrial revolution. Early factories were powered by water, animals, or humans, not steam, until James Watt (1736-1819) invented the first engine powered by steam and it began to run factories increasing production of goods and profits. The first industrial revolution began in England because it rich despoits of iron and coal, reliable source of water, English colonies supplied the market with cotton, and the English had a large market for manufactured goods. The demand of manurfactured goods stimulated industry. As the cost of production rose, manufactures found new ways to meet the increased demands for the manufactured products with new technological advances such as porter brewers, canals transporters, Spinning Jenny, cotton gin, steam boat, road, cement, railways, and trains. Chapter four discusses how the invention of railways, telegraphs, and roads civilzed the British Empire changed it economic, social, and political systems as did the Industrial revolution.
Chapter five talked about the importance of technological advances in the Second Industrial Revolution of 1870. Science based industry created a greater consumer society which was the dawn of corporate market and collaboration of with university research, government agencies, and industries, the second Industrial Revolution created an age of science and systems. With the discovery of the active ingredient in coal and the invention of a dye using the synthetic version of that ingredient, synthetic and chemical science took over from the natural on a massive scale with the help of Jacob Perkins, who was considered the father of the industry of chemisty, and his factory factory. This discovery of creating synthetic chemicals in massive quantities led to the creation of organic chemistry, artificial fertilizers and eventually chemical warfar. Thomas Edison and the Edison electric company, later known as Edison General Electric, began the age of computers with the invention of the light bulb, the electical grid and later on the Network Analyer, an analog computer. These inventions were the birth of organized capitalism by industrials, scientists, and engineers driven by competition and demand for the product. Engineering emerged as a professional and not just an assistant to military. Research laboratories, patent litigation, and capital and science based industries partnered with professionals like the industrists and university scientists working with Inventors, designers, and engineers on developing new technologies changed the production of technology forever.
My group did chapter six, and it is about Eurrope’s Moderism movement and how it affected home construction and home making as industries. Chapter seven covers 1936-1990
and talks about technological and chemical warfre like the Atomic Bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and how technological advances such as digital computing helped further technological advances. The US was not the only ones that developed chemical warfare. Chapter seven also talked about computer chips, transitors, and high frequency radars which was invented by the US and English together. As a result jobs were created to build weapons, and buildings and factories were built for warfare. The military played a huge role in the development of technology in this period more so than any other period which resulted in a lot of waste.Chapter eight talked about globalization of the world and how technology is the driving force of eoncomics and culture. Globalization helped with regulations for workers and brought some third world countries out of proverty. Globalizion is attributed to the lost of diverse cultures world wise and the loss of identity. Fax machines couldn’t communicate with one another until the 1990s and helped diverse companies to operate with one another. Chapter eight also discussed the negative impacts of fast food technologies on people and labor and the World Wide Web and it’s several view points for the creation of the internet. ARPAnet is the prototype of the internet of connecting different networks. Military needed to integrate communication networks and internet was the solution to this problem. Computers progressively got smaller from the 60s to a room size to to the 90s so that consumers could purchase personal computers. With the creation of the personal computer market came electronic mail and the domain name system. Email allowd the sending and receving of data files on the World Wide Web.
Chapter nine covered the years of 2001-2011 and discussed the technology of the World Trade Centers and terrorism. The World Trade Towers were 110 stories with an experiemental design in order for the US to have bragging rights to the biggest building. This chapter also covers unstustainable energy, information networks and global shipping. Unsustainable energy is cheap and abundant energy caused by fossil fuel consumption and gives off harmdul emissions and contributes to global warming. As a result, E-85 was developed but caused more problems with food prices (corn) and led to food riots in Mexico which caused more Mexicans to cross oer into the US. Hackers make information networks more vulnerable causing cyber warfare and security threats for shipping and receiving causing delays. It takes immerse work and substantial creativity to make a secure world and needs a solution to the consantly evolving world.
Chapter ten summed up all the other chapters in Misa’s book adding in his own conclusions and comentaries. He discusses technology’s broad used and flexibilities with varieties of technology changing over time, and how it interacts with societies and cultures. The key idea is that technology influences the future of society social and political understandings. There isn’t a simple on size fits all definition that explains technology’s impact on society. In the modernist view, “science is the machine that propels the modern world” (page 300, Misa, 2011) Misa discusses that science did not drive technological innovations during the eras of industry, commerce, and courts. Misa explains that today, there are numerous interactions between university research and industrial innovation, specifically with the sciences of chemistry and physics. Science is useful, but is not requires for technological advances in society.
Chapter ten also discusses the displacement of technology and the process of one technology getting displaced for a new one. This is one way culture is affected by technology. Displacement “is how societies, through their technologies, orient themselves toward the future and, in a general way, direct themselves down certain social and cultural paths,” (page 311, Misa, 2011). Many times these technological displacements are met with resistance, and many people or actors in society play a role in either hindering technology, or driving it forward, and rarely is it one single group of people that forces technology through the future. Many dominant and non-dominant actors legitmitze their power and place in society using technology as a tool for success. Dominant actors strive for dominance throught the mobilization of technology.
Technology by itself does not cause change, “it is a mistake to believe that technology by itself “causes” change, because as argued above technology is not only a force for but also a product of social and cultural change” (page 314, Misa, 2011). There is a digital divide between rich societies and poor countries, such as Africa and suggests that the have-nots could struggle indefinitely to catch up the the richer societies. Many countries also experience a disjunction between “their traditional cultural and political forms and the wider world of modern technologies,” such as Palestine and Pakistan.
Misa’s discussions on technology affecting culture are extremely interesting. While these are conversations I have had in classes in the past, I never considered the chain of events and implications of new technologies. In chapter nine, the invention of E-85 as an alternative fuel causing more harm than good was a shocking discovery for me. I knew technology could affect societies negatively, but I never dreamed how far it coulf carry. Overall, the information offered in Misa’s book is interesting, but it doesn’t really help me understand how to use techology in my organization. Although, it is good understand the implications of technology on culture and society. Another interesting piece that occurred in history was the discovery of synthetic chemicals and th invention of indigo colored dye. It was ironic to see how in that case of tecnology it influenced fashion and culture on a more superficial level. However, it was scary to see how such a simple discovery can lead to bigger problems in society, like chemical warfare and the invention of the atomic bomb. In conclusion, I learned a lot reading Misa’s Leonardo to the Internet and watching every team’s presentations. I really enjoyed watching the presentations on Voicethread or YouTube, and I believe his form of presenting was better than watching groups present in class simply using Power Point. I really enjoyed people’s videos that used Prezi and Screencast-o-matic. Thanks everyone for the hard work!
