Difference between revisions of "325--2011--Week 12 Questions/Comments"
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“New electrical technologies were usually perceived not as tools to build cooperative service institutions, but rather as the key to personal freedom.” At the end of section 1, Nye makes the argument that electricity suggested the transforming of the home’s environment. By allowing all sorts of tools that helped individuals with daily tasks that minimized time on certain projects, it allowed the “Mrs. Modern Woman” to complete her jobs in a much more efficient and easier manner. The item I found most interesting in this reading was the author’s comment, “The most popular form of electrification was the family Christmas tree.” I found it fascinating that just the invention of lighting the Christmas tree with small multi-colored bright bulbs, it allowed “new force encouraged experimentation” while still allowing people to take pleasure in this newfound tradition that still lasts today. – Megan Gallagher | “New electrical technologies were usually perceived not as tools to build cooperative service institutions, but rather as the key to personal freedom.” At the end of section 1, Nye makes the argument that electricity suggested the transforming of the home’s environment. By allowing all sorts of tools that helped individuals with daily tasks that minimized time on certain projects, it allowed the “Mrs. Modern Woman” to complete her jobs in a much more efficient and easier manner. The item I found most interesting in this reading was the author’s comment, “The most popular form of electrification was the family Christmas tree.” I found it fascinating that just the invention of lighting the Christmas tree with small multi-colored bright bulbs, it allowed “new force encouraged experimentation” while still allowing people to take pleasure in this newfound tradition that still lasts today. – Megan Gallagher | ||
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| + | The advertising campaign that Bruce Barton developed for GE that compared a woman's (and eventually, a man's, an industrial worker's, etc) time and work with the low-cost, high-efficiency machines shows the way in which society had moved from one that valued "'task-oriented concern for a flow of time in life events'...[to one that valued] 'the economic, time-oriented perception of efficiency." (Nye 256) The advent of a Tayloristic, efficiency-motivated home system, particularly as shown in these advertisements, shows the way in which women were suddenly prime targets of advertising. This particular set of advertisements was engineered to make women feel as though working those hours themselves, wasting precious hours of their lives, was an exercise in futility and inefficiency. Women were led to believe that it was for the moral good to buy these products and appliances that would allow them to devote more time to child-rearing; the ideal woman would "not give to sweeping the time that belong[ed] to her children."(Nye 272) In tying an appliance-based household not only to convenience and luxury but to a woman's morality and success as a mother likely created a great deal of revenue for GE and other commercial electric companies. -- Nicole S. | ||
== Pursell reading == | == Pursell reading == | ||
