What if I took away ALL your technology, from your dishwashers to cell phones to electric locks on your doors, and you had to live for a week without it.

Would you be able to do it?

Well, if you think you could then good for you.

But it wouldn’t be easy for everyone. Our 21st century lives rely on our technology for almost everything we do. Education, transportation, communication, and many more areas of our lives are full of technology, even if we don’t know it.

And that’s what our past unit has been all about.

Disruption

This unit was one that we have been looking st for a long time, and finished off with our amazing trip to California. Read this post to hear lots more about our trip. We went to three different cities in California and visited lots of major tech businesses such as Twitter,

Google,

Apple,

and Intel.

These big corporations are more present in our lives than ever in our day and age.

After returning from the trip we had a few projects to work on. One of them was a scrapbook type of digital book describing our trip and how it all relates to the theme of disruption, which you can read at the end of this post. Another was all about our time at High Tech High, which was in the form of an interview podcast, and I have a post on it here. And the next project was a partner project, and I worked with Isobel, and the project was a choice of a few formats, and a choice of a location.

Heres what our options were for formats:

And here’s what we could have done for location:

Me and Isobel decided to a video about High Tech High, because we instantly thought of a good thesis, and thought a video would be a great way to showcase how different High Tech High is. We filmed a lot when we were in California, more specifically High Tech High, and had lots of clips to work with for our video. But without any other talk about it, here is is below so you can watch it:

We created this video to show the main differences to our school Seycove and the PLP program we are in, to HTH and their crazy school.

The video production went smoothly other than a few technical difficulties with photo storage and iCloud, and we both did our parts well. Sometimes there was confusion as to who was doing what or how things should be done, and that is just bad communication on our parts, which can easily be improved for next time. Other than that, I’d say this video was a success and I’m happy with what we created.

But of course, as always in PLP, we aren’t done yet! We still needed to do one last thing on disruption… other than this post. We had to write

an essay.

Yeah, I know, it’s crazy. As if we didn’t already have like four projects. And at this time as well, Destination Imagination regionals are looming in the back of our minds, making us cry ourselves to sleep with stress, or in Ethan’s case, get a lisp from a swollen tongue.

(Which was caused by stress. It’s a real thing, look it up.)

But, anyways, back to the essay. The theme was about technological disruption, and the driving question being as follows:

How has technology acted as a disruption throughout history?

For our essay, since it’s a synthesis essay, we needed to use information from three different sources. One of them had to be from the book we read in class, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. The other two were up to us. But anyways, I’ll show you the essay and then do the rest of my talking:

Cameras Are A Disruption
By Samuel Scheewe

 

Every single person in our world has encountered some type of technology in their life. Technology has grown so big and so diverse in our world, and it has completely re-shaped it. Technology is a disruption, and it is evident in the invention and modern development of the camera. It has changed our entertainment, personal lives, and privacy, all by one device.

Movies and TV shows are some of the most popular forms of entertainment. Almost every single person has been to a movie theatre at least once in their life, and these movies are there because of one thing. Cameras. Cameras are mounted on cars, planes, and drones for these professional films, and are the reason for the millions of dollars the industry makes every movie. An entertainment study by ISBSWorld in 2012 claimed that the movie and film entertainment industry reached $126.8 Billion, ranking it among the top 5 forms of entertainment our world has ever seen. The industry has only gotten bigger since then. People watch movies every day, and every year hundreds of new movies are made. And it all wouldn’t be possible without cameras. Before cameras and movies, people found other ways of entertainment. But since the recent development of the professional filming cameras, it has brought the film industry to the top, to the point where almost every household has one working television, and is used daily. Movies and TV shows are a very popular form of entertainment, as they are extremely addicting. It’s very easy to say, “Just one more show,” and keep watching. Filmmaking is all about keeping the attention of the audience, and that is all in captivating camera angles and gripping script writing. This has changed our entertainment from books to television because of the way that movies let us hear the story, see it, and follow our characters through an exciting adventure. The movie immerses us and lets us escape our world and join another for a short time. Cameras are the reason for this change from books to movies, and it’s because of this change people can watch and keep stories with them whether it’s an action movie, horror film, or nature documentary. 21st century entertainment is getting better and better, and the cameras behind those screens get better and better. These stories will be kept with our generation forever.

Cameras have become so small, that they have found a way into our own personal lives. They can go with us wherever we go, in our pocket. The camera was integrated into the smartphone, and this was revolutionary in that people didn’t need a separate camera if they wanted to take pictures anymore. Now, everyone had the power of photography at their fingertips, which was huge. A study on Altitudeinc about the iPhone camera as a disruption to digital cameras says: “It is a photographic experience designed for the masses and one that will quickly obsolete the need for a separate camera for most people.” And Altitudeinc is correct. Having HD photo and video capabilities already in your smartphone is a very quick design that is more appealing to the masses than having to lug around a different camera. And the cameras in our smartphones are dummy-proof. It’s a point and shoot type of idea, where the exposure and focus adjusts automatically, making it super easy for everyone to use. This has changed our world, and has let every single person with a smartphone be a photographer of their own lives, and can keep their memories as long as they want. Having a camera on our smartphones is something we take for granted. They effect social media, which is an extremely popular industry, and communication in general. Taking photos and sharing them with other people is what a smartphone does, and we wouldn’t be able to do that if none of the smartphones didn’t have cameras. The camera is one of the biggest functions of a modern day smartphone, and without it our personal social media and communication would be drastically different. Cameras have changed our personal lives for the better, making us all capable of keeping our own stories in our pockets.

Would you want someone watching you at all times? No, you probably wouldn’t. People want their privacy, and that’s your right. Security cameras have changed that. They aren’t able, or allowed, to watch you at all times, but they protect you in all the public places you go. Whenever you go out to the mall, or just walk around downtown, there are cameras on the outside of buildings. And they are there for one reason. To help prevent or discourage crime. This is another form of camera we take for granted. They have been a positive disruption to our daily life, as Reolink survey on the effectiveness of home security cameras informs us that 83% of burglars will not rob their target house or building if they can see security cameras. This is a big number. Having cameras constantly surveying the activity in public places is a vital help to police. But there also is a fine line between security purposes and controlling the freedom of people. This is clearly demonstrated in the book Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, where the main character Marcus is being watched and controlled, but manages to fight back. This problem of too much control is always up for debate, but having security cameras still greatly decreases crime rates. And it wouldn’t be possible if not for the camera. It has truly changed our world as we now it.

The camera was once used only for professional filmmakers, and was big, heavy and only shot in black and white. But with the modern developments, it has changed the way we live in multiple areas of our life. Cameras brought a $126.8 billion entertainment industry to life, impacted the way we share and document our personal lives, and have prevented and protected us from crime. All of these areas of our lives are ones we see every single day. Without the new technology of cameras disrupting our world for the better, we would live extremely different lives.

 

I found that for most of the essays I’ve written, I’m pretty confident going into them as I’m good at writing. But for this essay, with all our other work going on, I felt I was less prepared. It took me a while to come up with my thesis, and I didn’t finish my actual outline until after I wrote the essay. Which isn’t good, in case you’re wondering.

But, I think that for all my unpreparedness, I did pretty well. I found my two other sources, and I think they supported my points really well. My main idea was that cameras are changing our lives worldwide for the better. They are going from big machines, to something that can fit in your pocket, or fly hundreds of feet in the air on a drone. I think that this essay explains and supports what I’m saying. The day or two before the essay I was preparing as much as I could, brainstorming ideas and such. But I feel that I don’t really need to do that much preparing other than an outline to get my ideas down. I felt fairly confident beforehand, and I feel confident in my product.

Overall, this has been my favourite unit in a long time. I really enjoyed hearing about how all the businesses we know today started out as small as three guys in a garage. It really interested me how they though of something totally crazy and different and kept going with it until they changed the world. That was quite inspiring.

And then we went on and actually experienced all these businesses and organizations in real life, while being on an incredibly fun trip with my good friends, and it was absolutely incredible. I will remember this trip for the rest of my life, and all the things I’ve learned as well. I’m very glad I took this opportunity and went with my classmates this year, because it was something to remember.

This unit has been amazing, fun and tough at the same time, and I’m actually sad to see it go. But I can only imagine how the next projects and assignments will be after this great one.

Thanks for reading,

See you.