What is technology?
Technology in my opinion is not just related to digital inventions. Technology is anything that is created by human and made to solve problems. It could be objective tools like knife, watch, or car. Also, it could be digital like the internet, software, or any digital tools. Technology also can relate to different cultures. All cultures must have some technologies that are related to them. For example, some cultures have specific musical tools like the African drums which also considered to be a technology. In brief, technology is anything that is created to solve a problem and it can be digital or non-digital technologies.
What are the two most important moments in the history of technology?
In my opinion, two most important moments in the history of technology we learned about in this class were Babbage’s invention and world war 2. These two moments helped inventing the digital computers. Babbage’s difference engine is the first the programmable computer invented in 1822. This invention followed by Morse code which was developed during the world war 2. These two inventions leaded to the invention of modern computers.
What is the most important thing to learn about technology?
The most important thing to learn about technology is learning the history of human inventions and the history of wars. Wars always causing problems and forcing the humans to solve these problems by creating technologies.
What did we learn in this course?
During this semester, we learned a lot about technology and its history. The class was amazing because everything we learned was new to me. All of the readings were interesting especially the book “The Information” by Gleick. This book gave us an idea of how digital information started. We learned about Morse code and the revolution that came after it. We also learned about video games and we read Hennessey and McGowan’s book “The Comic Book Story of Video Games.” Which was also an interesting book. This book gave us a short history of video games and how video games started. We learned from it that wars played an important part of technology development as Hennessey and McGowan stated in their book “war (even the “cold” variety as we will see) has typically driven technology forward.” We also read “Ada’s Algorithm” by James Essinger. This book was talking about how digital age started. The book focuses on Babbage’s invention that leads to the programmable computer which was contributed by the mathematician Ada Lovelace.
What is the most challenging thing in this course?
In this course, the most challenging thing for me was the writing. I am very bad in writing but I really liked the topics we discussed in this class during this semester. I will continue improving my writing skills and I am looking forward to learning more about digital technology and multimedia.