Difference between revisions of "325--2011--Week 6 Questions/Comments"
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The reading from last week discussing how nations and people view levels of civilization through a lens of technology is supported or enhanced by Nye’s discussion of the World’s Fair. In a walled off section, there was an electricity display with lights. From this point onward, all civilization would be judged based upon whether or not it was lit up at night by Edison’s innovations. In other parts of the fair, they had displays of less civilized people, such as Natives, Mexicans, and Blacks in the Old South. The bar of civilization has been raised.~~Kyle Allwine | The reading from last week discussing how nations and people view levels of civilization through a lens of technology is supported or enhanced by Nye’s discussion of the World’s Fair. In a walled off section, there was an electricity display with lights. From this point onward, all civilization would be judged based upon whether or not it was lit up at night by Edison’s innovations. In other parts of the fair, they had displays of less civilized people, such as Natives, Mexicans, and Blacks in the Old South. The bar of civilization has been raised.~~Kyle Allwine | ||
| + | I found it really interesting that in the introductory readings in the first chapter, we read about the ways in which power came to symbolize much more than power, without going too much into what that meant for society. Part V of Chapter 5, with its focus on the social construction of the American power system, focused on non-commodified aspects of electricity, in its uses in wider society. I also saw an interesting parallel, related to what Kyle said above about "civilized people," between the bar for civilization among peoples and the bar for civilization among First-World individuals themselves, with farmers being lumped in with "less civilized people," deprived of electricity and without the capacity to handle it--supposedly.- Nicole Steck | ||
== Electricity and the City -- Great White Way == | == Electricity and the City -- Great White Way == | ||
