Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

For my artifact, I originally wanted to choose something like a phone or personal computer. Although, those are both quite basic and so after some browsing I decided to choose an escalator.

Olympic Skier Fabian Bösch dangles one-handed from an escalator. https://nypost.com/2018/02/13/olympian-skier-dangles-one-handed-up-an-escalator/

Escalators are meant to make it easier for people to go up and down sets of stairs. However, I feel that the escalator, invented in 1892, was a step towards a lazy America. Looking at the world today, society is constantly looking for technological advancements that may simplify our lives for the better. We have microwaves, toasters, bluetooth headphones, In-Plane-WiFi, and even a self-checkout line in select grocery stores. I am not meaning to say that these are bad or they shouldn’t be used, I am simply providing context for the fact that the world loves technological advancements. In relation to the escalator, an elevator is used for the same reason, to lift people up an incline which requires minimal effort by the user. How many times have you seen people take the stairs when there is an elevator nearby? Pretty rare, right? With that being said, we are led to the downside of the escalator. The biggest problem is that it has tainted our perception and when there is an escalator next to a set of stairs, we are going to take the escalator nearly every time. The same problem occurs with elevators and it is only going to get worse! In fact, they have “escalators” that are in airports on flat ground, called “moving walkways.” In my opinion, these technologies should only be used if you’re truly in a rush. Nowadays we have so many people that sit at desks all day, sit in front of their computers, sit in their cars, and it feels like everyone is progressively getting lazier as time goes on. As a society, I believe that we should continue to make technological advancements that simplify our lives, while at the same time promoting a healthy lifestyle.

The technological artifact I chose for this project is a heart rate tracker. I was born 5 months premature and as a result, suffered life-long heart complications. Because of this, throughout my childhood and adolescence, I would meet periodically with my doctor to review my health. However, more recently, a heart rate tracker has been made available to me.

Photo by Deyanira Tovar, August 2018.

For me personally, my heart rate tracker has been a vital piece of technology that has recently been of great use in my life. Not many people know of what this heart monitor is or what it is for when they first see it. My heart monitor is a small blue device that I wear which tracks my heart rate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. A phone application which is connected to the tracker then has a screen in which I can see my heart rate in real time. More importantly, the app has a variety of options that I can press whenever I feel any issues related to my hearts health. These options include fatigue, slow/fast heart rate, chest pain, etc. Once I click any of these options, my selection and heart rate information will be sent to an agency which tracks my results. At the beginning of the next month. the results will be sent to my doctor who will review them for any heart rate abnormalities. For me personally, before having this device available to me, I would have to periodically meet with a cardiologist who would run tests, including checking my heart rate for a long period of time, to keep track of my health.

Reading about the mission of the Media Archeology Lab made me think of just how limited health-related technology used to be and how it may have affected the diagnosis of conditions, specifically, heart conditions.  In the past, heart rate monitors were  usually only available in hospitals or by use of a doctor. Now, heart rate monitors are widely available for a variety of purposes. However, medically, with the new heart rate application, people who suffer from heart related health-issues are now able to not only track their heart rate, but they are able to pinpoint the exact symptoms they feel. They are then able to late discuss their results with doctors and check for any other heart related issues. Beforehand, patients who experienced chest pains or other symptoms related to their heart health had to go into a doctors office or hospital to discuss this. Often times, by the time patients were able to have their heart rate tracked, the symptoms would not be present, and therefore, their heart rate results would not accurately correlate to their symptoms. This would be frustrating on both parties, and would lead to the late diagnosis of heart conditions. Furthermore, it was a lot more difficult for patients to communicate and track their symptoms before going to a doctor, and doctors were limited to they ways in which they tracked a patients symptoms. Leading to oftentimes, a delayed or even false diagnosis. This new technology has changed the world medically, and has had an immense impact on my life.

Going off of the topic we have been learning in class points, plane, lines are in our everyday lives we see it everywhere no matter where we go different things will have one of the three components incorporated in the things we see it can be inside or outside for example a building it has these 3 components but are put in different areas.

This is a picture inside Banff National Park in Alberta Canada. It has an amazing skyline with a sky super hazy from the smoke air quality and the green tree make the plane of the mountain range so amazing. The imagery of the tree has a lot of multiplication and the mountain range looks like its 2 dimensional shapes. The teal green lake has a mirror reflection of the mountain range.

Banff National Park

this is a picture of the carpet in the club junior ballroom this imagery has a lot of different colors, shapes. this is a unique carpet because they have many different lines and patterns which make the carpet unique. Also in this image I got a picture of different people feet and shoes but what interesting is that I took a picture of my shoes and two different people feet with one foot in the picture. I think that it’s a different interpretation. Each of our design on our shoes are completely different because we have different patterns and a lot of symmetry.

carpet and shoes in the junior ballroom

this last picture is from unsplash by timothy eberly its a picture of the Seattle skyline and in this image all the buildings are lit up with these red dots these buildings have different points were the red dots points they come in different points and sizes. The trees in the imagery make it stand out because of the way the tree is place its shaped in a curvy edge.

https://unsplash.com/photos/h3vT1-T2nfc

Seattle Skyline got off of unsplashed

Top two photos are by Jan Rac

For my technological artifact, I chose to go with books as a defining object for my generation, and more realistically myself. In all honesty, I don’t really remember much technology from when I was a kid. Cassettes were on the downwards slope, we had CD players, and MP3’s weren’t a thing until middle school. Cell phones and Ipods definitely didn’t gain as much popularity until 6th grade from what I can remember. I don’t recall having a laptop until the beginning of high school. Then again, I moved around a lot as a kid…

Shown here are some of the books that I’ve read that my father gave me one summer. Photo by Jessica Harja, August 2018. 

That being said, the most common form of media I can remember are books. Books were always a constant from place to place and from school to school. Two of the bigger ones being Harry Potter and Twilight series. This media was so easy to escape to. A whole world full of events, characters, histories, and worlds all in 500 worded pages packed between two hard covers with artwork on them. I am willing to admit, I got caught on a few occasions reading a book while in class because it was definitely more interesting than what the teacher was talking about for the day. Some of the more enjoyable books I’ve read were from my father’s collection shown in this post. Clive Cussler is an author of numerous books that are a combination of mystery, action, and adventure books. This particular series follows his character Dirk Pitt through numerous stories.

In terms of the Media Archaeology Lab , books are starting to be an older form of story presentation. The more common way of finding books are now online through Amazon kindles or tablets. Even now, I have a mix of digital and print-based books. As a college student, it is easier and more cost effective to have a kindle that can hold numerous cheap books in one location. But from a generational standpoint, I love having books. Especially different kinds of books. Being able to hold the weight of the book and the story it holds in its vast pages and to smell the ink on the paper is a vastly different experience than holding a singular weight object that eventually gives you a headache because it is a backlit screen behind the words.

This is the Gameboy Advance SP I’ve owned since 2003. It was released then by Nintendo in Japan. The SP stands for “SPecial” (Photo by Chandhni Jayakanth, August 2018).

I chose the Gameboy Advance SP and it’s cartridge cards as my technological artifact. The influence of this piece of technology in my life is huge since I’ve owned it since the release of the product and still own it till this date. The Gameboy Advance SP was one of a kind hand-held video game console developed by Nintendo. Having used the Gameboy since 5 years old, it makes it the first piece of technology I had ever owned and handled. Although it was very small in size compared to the technological advancement and video game consoles you can see now, it could fit right into my pocket whenever I had to carry it somewhere and it was also the perfect sizing for my little hands. It was the same for a lot of my friends. We would buy similar games and play while sitting together (since the Gameboy did not have the Bluetooth functions back then). I was living in Hong Kong when I got the Gameboy and because of the proximity to Japan, the video-game console was a major hit in Asia as well. Whenever I took the subway with my parents, I could atleast see about 10 other people of my age playing the Gameboy. As years went by, I bought the Nintendo DS, the Playstation Vita, and the Nintendo Switch this summer. Although the graphics cards and technology has developed immensely, I always see myself going back home to India and taking my Gameboy out of my storage and playing with the Tom & Jerry game for hours together. Whenever I play with it, I get reminded of the simple times back in Hong Kong and when I would play the Gameboy against my cousins and see who was the video-game king/queen.

This picture is my collection of the cartridge cards that were used to play the games in the Gameboy Advance SP. The Nintendo DS also allowed the use of these Cartridge Cards although they had developed a specialized chip for it. (Photo by Chandhni Jayakanth, August 2018).

The Media Archeology Lab helped me understand the different technology used even before my existence. And those include gaming consoles as well. Although I only use my gaming consoles as a leisurely activity, I always saw them as the first steps to introducing me to various other digital products I have used and still use till this date, like my Digital Camera, the GoPro, and my design iPad.

The Media Archeology Lab helps me appreciate the products, technology, and software that was used way back. Similar to that, when I showed my cousin the Gameboy she absolutely loved it and appreciated the simplicity of the technology. Even though technology is developing rapidly, sometimes going back to the roots of it lets us appreciate the process it has gone through.