The Digital Past

This week in class we talked about the Cold War and how it affected things, like technology nowadays. It played a huge role in the growth of technology, military strength, and the spread of knowledge. Incredible, new inventions were coming out all the time, like the atomic bomb, all prompted by the need to demonstrate dominance over the Soviet Union. Jet engines, rockets, radar technology, and so much more came to be due to this non-violent war. One major thing that came from this is the democratization of knowledge and information, as now it was becoming public. It’s important that this happened because now we all benefit from learning all this in school. Although there was one invention that Professor O’Malley mentioned in lecture that reminded of the movie, “The Imitation Game,” which is the ENIAC. Again, speaking on incredible new inventions that arose from the Cold War, this Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer was able to break the German code so that the United States could know when attacks were going to happen. The movie highlights how it was invented, but also Turing’s story. (It’s an absolutely incredible movie that I recommend to anyone!) Personally, I find it really interesting how certain events play into our growth as a civilization, especially events like war. Yet, most of them always affect us today as it changed things back then, which are normal to us now.

Yet again, we have an ongoing argument between two things in class. This period, we talked about idealism vs realism. An idealist believes that somewhere there is an ideal for everything, a perfect world. A realist on the other hand does not believe that there is an ideal somewhere, that the world we see is all there is. Professor O’Malley made the claim that you can’t be a mixture of both, in which I completely disagree. I feel as though I am a mixture of both, but lean more towards idealism. He believes that most idealists are religious, and God is their ideal, which I understand and can agree with. Personally, I’m not extremely religious but I am a bit, and I’m always looking for the ideal. Always envisioning the perfect situation, even though it doesn’t have to do with my religion. In that sense, I feel as I am an idealist because I’m always searching for those beautiful things and perfect moments, wanting everything I envision. Although, I also feel like I’m a realist because I am always comparing things, which links to the word mimesis, where everything is similar yet different. Take it to the example of the sunset and why we like to look at them. For an idealist, it’s a glimpse of the ideal, perhaps because many believe that God made it. For a realist, they believe that the sunset is beautiful in the context of comparing it to other sunsets. Here, I feel as if I can be both because sunsets are beautiful, but after seeing them so many times, I think they are like any other sunset. I think you can be a mixture of both, despite his arguments, because nowadays everything is more unified and mixed together, especially when it comes to religion. My generation doesn’t view religion as other generations did, like we break rules from the Bible all the time, such as the premarital sex. Weird example, but it’s true with this generation. So I feel now we can be a mixture of both, as we want that ideal in our way but we also know the world how it is. This is a hard argument and I feel like it has to do a lot with opinion.

In class on Monday, we talked about different mediums and how technology has changed a lot. Personally, the most interesting thing we learned was how “the medium is the message.” I never thought about that, but it’s true. Think about it, a text vs a call, which is more urgent? In that sense, the medium (which is the call or text) is the message of urgency. Nowadays, the medium is the thing to capture your attention, not the actual contents of the message. Then we talked about how technology has changed a lot of things in our lives, which couldn’t be more true. It has changed our perception of time, as the internet condenses things for us to we can spend more time doing other things, which also makes it harder for people of our generation to focus on just one thing. It also affects our memories, as now we can “google” anything and have the information right then and there, as opposed to internalizing information. Professor O’Malley then brought up whether you would want a doctor who has to consult the books or one who has everything memorized, which you would most likely choose the one who has it memorized. If something were to go wrong, the one with everything memorized would have a better chance of saving you, as they know what to do, but the other guy would have to take time to go look at a book. It’s scary looking at how much technology really has changed everything, as I’ve never really thought of it.

Hi everyone!

I’ll be  maintaining this blog about the course “The Digital Past” (Hist 390) with Professor O’Malley. This course started on August 27th, and was honestly nothing like I expected the course to be like. My friends who have previously taken the course told me they had to make a website at the end of a National Park, so I was prepared for that. Although, Professor O’Malley definitely shocked me by saying that he would be focusing more on music and digital compression. I honestly love this approach because music is a huge part of my life and I love it, so this makes me a lot more passionate about the course. I like how he set up the class like more of a debate as apposed to students only reading off slides. He makes the course very intellectually stimulating because we are encouraged to speak and make connections to refute his arguments. Overall, I’m pretty excited for this course and the final project, which is to make a song. So far, so good!

Kailyn