Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

Digital cassette tape music converter. Photo by Rachel Lentz, August 2018.

Technology seems like the focus of our industrial age. Buildings get higher, devices smaller, and simple aspects of life more complex. “Soonish” describes the formula for how our world developed into what it has and explores the practicalities of advancing technology. Its main point is how the development and use of technologies is usually built on a foundation of former technology, funding, and physical infrastructure. The authors delve into how these systems might be put into place to develop the feats of science fiction we all hope and dream of.

Technology itself is defined as the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes. However, when it comes to acquiring knowledge, it can be a little bit less “practical”. The transfer of knowledge and learning is not something that only can be confined to books or the classroom. Knowledge is passed down several ways, and one of these ways is through oral history. In applications of science, oral history can give a perspective of where we are, motivation for moving forward, and inspire creative solutions to old problems. This applies even more in the coming years as technology develops, and so should our knowledge of the world and the people in it. “Soonish” talks about how a foundation is needed for large new innovations to develop. Oral history helps provide a unique part of this foundation that is newly emerging. The collection of the stories of regular people provide the human information and drive that could make the future tech and explains for present.

To combine our discussion of technology and oral tradition I would like to interview my father. Our discussion would focus on the technology of transportation, and the theme would be change over time. I would like to discuss the surprising way that he has seen the world change from his childhood and have him discuss the implications for future technologies, especially in travel and transportation/vehicles. The picture included in this post is how an older model cars technology was adapted for current use as a cassette tape is converted for digital use. This is important as it show how the technology has changed in vehicles in just a few years and also how it can be adapted. The discourse on self-driving vehicle could be discussed as well, including issues of clean energy/electric vehicles, and how involved tech already is in vehicles. We could also discuss GPS, communication between vehicles, and much more.

This discussion would hopefully also go into the advancement and adaptation of technology we have seen. The use of old structure in the employment of new technologies and for different infrastructure is a interesting topic that could be breached. Oral history is one of the best ways to learn of this change over time from a personal perspective and develop a clearer view of what the world was and how it might change.

In all honesty, it is hard to draw a connection between the chapter I chose from Soonish and notions about oral history from the story corps. The chapter I chose to read was chapter two and it was talking about the ways in which space exploration (more specifically rockets) could be made more affordable if scientists explored a couple of other methods like reusing old rockets (Weinersmith, 2017, pg. 13). On the surface, there’s nothing that relates this reading to the information that talks about oral histories and how things are recorded. Maybe, in a non-connected way, these readings are connected in the way in which space technology was created and how the information scientists recorded helps future generations on how they navigate making space technology more affordable. Or even just discussing it with other scientists.

As I briefly mentioned in the previous class on Tuesday, I would like to opt out of creating an oral history project for a sound-scape project. It’s not that an oral history project is uninteresting; I’ve completed similar projects and relatively know how to create a similar project. It’s that the alternative project sounds very interesting in how someone could create a

space with sounds alone and transport the listener to that space.

Currently, I am a double major and I am finishing my first degree next semester. I’ve been trying to think of ways I could incorporate adding a sense of space into my final exhibition and this project would be a great way to explore a sound perspective for it. Primarily what I would like to do is record sounds regarding rain, wind, rustling leaves, or other similar sounds to try and represent a forest or the arboretum over at the University of Idaho.

This is a photo of a set of trees I took at the University of Idaho Arboretum for my BFA project. Created by: Jessica Harja, October 2018.

Weinersmith, Zach and Kelly. Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies that’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything. Penguin Press: New York, 2017.

For this assignment, I read the chapter of Soonish which focuses on augmented reality. When I first chose this section, I did not really even know what this meant; I just thought that it sounded like an interesting topic to learn more about. It turns out that augmented reality as well as virtual reality are ways to change what we see, hear, and smell. Virtual reality refers to a complete change of environment, virtually of course, while augmented reality is the addition of certain things to a reality in which we already exist.

This topic could relate to oral history in the sense that when people go through life using technological devices which skew their perception of reality, we have to question the authenticity of their oral histories and stories. This does not even have to specifically correlate with the idea of augmented reality but could relate to something as simple as watching television shows. When kids grow up watching a lot of TV, they may not be in tune with the reality of what is going on around them. This is something that is very interesting to think about.

For this project, I would like to interview my dad. Although he is not too much older than I am, he is obviously of a different generation and therefore I think that some of his insights could potentially be very interesting. I would like to talk to him about the type of television set they had and the shows that they watched when he was growing up. I think there is also something to be said about households which only have one TV. He has told me in the past that they just had one in their living room, which was pretty common for that time, and that it forced him to spend more time with his family. I think that this interview could go in a lot of different directions and I just want to see where it takes us.

I focused on the sixth section within the book “Soonish” by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. This section was titled Robotic Construction, it discusses how eventually technology should develop robots that work construction. This idea stemmed from the need to build homes more efficiently and at a larger scale. This relates to oral history by connecting how things were done in the past to present. Within the chapter they talk about how home building was arguably done faster in the past. They give examples of Tomas Edison and his grad idea that instead of making a new home every time there was a demand, rather make a mold and pour one. Ernist Neufert was also a revolutionist thinker with his ideas to build homes on the back of train and collect materials as the train ventured. Given, both of these ideas were debunked, however they inspired us to think deeper and more critically about how we develop the process of building something and the technology involved. Today, scientists are developing a new way to build homes. With further advancements the future is not far off, maybe your next home will even be built by robots. Oral history plays an important role within society as it allows us to keep a record of past events and ideas. This chapters idea directly relates to oral history by providing historic examples of attempts to quicken the building process.

When asked to choose an individual for this oral history project, I imminently thought of my dad. My dad grew up in a small town in Alaska and often talks about how much technology has improved. He tells us stories of the gadgets he had growing up and even advancements being made currently within his work. Both my mom and dad are architects and are directly affected by updates in software and building codes. I would like to interview them both to get two different perspectives of how these advancements have changed their area of work separately. However, my dad specially would make a great candidate for this interview.

So I read the sixth part of the book “Soonish” titled ‘Robotic Construction’. This part of the book talks about how we should be moving towards having robots work in construction jobs specifically in building houses. How it relates to oral history is when the authors talk about the history of building homes faster in the past. First they bring up the fact that in 1917 Thomas Edison had the idea of instead making a new home every time you wanted one just make the mold of one and pour concrete into it. Then during World War II Ernst Neufert had the idea of making houses on the back of trains bringing in raw materials as they go along the tracks to build. None of these ideas caught on obviously they were kind of crazy. Nowadays scientists and engineers have made advances in the robot making houses area something that wasn’t thought to be possible until recently. The part of the book that is this chapter is a good example of talking about how robots doing construction work to make house building easier and faster. How it relates to oral history by having historical examples on previous attempts of making houses faster as well as easier.

I will be planning on interviewing my brother in law Marco since he is the oldest member of my immediate family who is not my parents. I don’t want to interview my parents just because they don’t speak english and it will be difficult with all the translations. My brother in law on the other hand is a lot older than me so it’ll be interesting to see how technology was used by him growing up poor in southern California. I am not sure which piece of technology to focus on really there’s a few I was thinking about like maybe the smartphone. I think i’m going with the smartphone since my brother in law use to work at Verizon Wireless store, so he has lots of experience with smartphones. But only in his adult life he has experience with a smartphone not when he was growing up so it’ll be interesting to see how our experiences differ.

Image from Flickr

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