Today we talked about the military’s ties with technology. The military doctrine: MAD or mutually agreed destruction came to height during the Cold War. This was a time when both the United States and Soviet Union was working with the newly discovered nuclear power. There was a tense air between the two nations and they began to fight Proxy Wars such as The Korean War and the Vietnam War. It was during this time, specifically the 1950s that the United States became a prominent international military power. And in order to keep up with the Soviets as well as other potential rivals, a lot of resources was put into computing.

The ENIAC or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer became the first computer ever invented. Along with this invention, Lee DeForest was the inventor of the Audion which allows amplification and variable output. This invention, along with transistors which were smaller, created less heat and were more efficient helped further the computing field. Transistors were mainly used in defense related research since wars spur innovation. Through this innovation DARPA or Defense advance research project agencies began to appear. DARPA Net was created and scientists used it to communicate with one another all over the country. This was a distributed network and was the result of the Cold War. The Cold War was very important for technology growth since it pushed American inventors and scientists to their limits in order to make America the number one country on the planet and more importantly, ahead of the Soviet Union.

Today we talked about rationalization. A key innovation of the industrial world is information management and record keeping. When this occurred the world became rationalized and information was put together and written down in a way that it could be organized and understood better; therefore rationalized. I had never thought of information being like that before. It makes sense to have a certain way of keeping information together in order to save time and make it easier for others to know what they are reading. I think that it was a great step in the right direction to make the world an easier place to understand.

Then we moved onto hypertext which is when a link is clicked and the reader is taken to another page or wall of text/ information. It makes sense to to do this because with hypertext, people can connect two pieces of information. One seamlessly flows into the other and makes for a wonderful train of information. Hypertexts avoid the trap of specialization which is good because information is not confined to one webpage or small bit of text in the corner of a page. Hypertext and rationalized work together to make information easier to understand and well as being able to comprehend it. Without hypertext information would be less rationalized and the world may not have the internet as we know it today.

Today we learned the difference between oral (of the mouth) and aural (aural). I found this very interesting because I am a musician, specifically a vocalist. These words have been thrown around me my entire life and the last place I expected them to appear was in my history class. I knew the difference but it was refreshing to know something in a class that I knew nothing about.

As we moved on we talked about the difference between idealists and realists. Idealists believe that there is something somewhere in the universe that is ideal and the purpose in life is to seek the ideal. Realists have no ideal, just a variation of a particular thing or idea. I identify as a realist more than an idealist. After hearing the difference between the two I knew that there was no way I was an idealist. I don’t believe there is an ideal for everything. I believe that I have a particular vision in mind of something, but there is no ideal. There are variations of shirts, chairs, dresses, microwaves, doors, etc. but there is no idea shirt, chair or dress because depending on how the item was made depends on its functionality. Some items have better functionality than others depending on what it’s used for. That’s why I don’t believe in the ideal. Because I don’t believe there is one single item of anything that can fulfill all potential services it might need to.