Difference between revisions of "325--Week 6 Questions/Comments"
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I think Elle put it nicely when she said that electricity was a "new and confusing technology" and the government didn't know how to treat it. Nye talks about the different speeds and motives of foreign governements to provide electricity to the citizenry and how the priorities in specific countries effected electrification in that country. In South Africa, electricity was used to improve gold, coal, and diamond mining, but not the homes of black workers. In Russia, Lenin pursued full electrification becuase he thought full socialism could not be attained without it. Electrification seems to have been illustrative of a country's political climate at the time. -Karen Siegmund | I think Elle put it nicely when she said that electricity was a "new and confusing technology" and the government didn't know how to treat it. Nye talks about the different speeds and motives of foreign governements to provide electricity to the citizenry and how the priorities in specific countries effected electrification in that country. In South Africa, electricity was used to improve gold, coal, and diamond mining, but not the homes of black workers. In Russia, Lenin pursued full electrification becuase he thought full socialism could not be attained without it. Electrification seems to have been illustrative of a country's political climate at the time. -Karen Siegmund | ||
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| + | I love the section explaining William Dean Howells' "A Traveler from Altruria." He thought because of electricity people could live off the land and travel into cities which were art centers and have the best of both worlds. Its a bit like Ebenezer Howard's City-Garden idea where the town and country model has an urban center but smaller streetcar suburbs along the outside. I know it was probably naive for these men to think it could happen but I like how they viewed electricity as opening up all these possibilities for rural areas almost like they had in Europe. Obviously since industry was on the rise, cities would take more advantage of electricity. Also in this section about rural electricity (or lack there of) it was interesting how people, even Roosevelt, viewed electricity on farms as something undesirable or cheating the system of natural cycles. In many cases, whether to use electricity or not was viewed as a moral question. -Lauren Milner | ||
