This is now going to be my third and most likely final blog post on California, as I have made to others about my trip to California with my class. I did one about what we did everyday on our trip, and the other I did on High Tech High. Anyways this next one is about the main reason why we went to California. The main reason why we went there is becuase California has many different examples of Disruption, starting from the San Diego Zoo all the way to Twitter HQ in San Francisco. What I am going to be focusing on is aircraft carriers, as my friend and I did a project on how it has disrupted Naval Warfare. The place that we got our information from was the USS Midway which is in San Diego California. It is now a museum becuase it has become obsolete as it has Diesel engines, and now ships are switching over to nucleur powered engines.
Anyways, I will now give you a background on the midway. The midway was the first aircraft carrier built after WWI, and just to give you an idea of big it is, it holds 4,000 crew 90 planes. It is also 296m long and weighs 45,000 metric tons. It is basically a floating city. It also went through a couple of changes, as instead of having an angled deck like you see in the photo above, it used to have a straight deck. The british came up with the idea to have an angle deck, as it allows the planes to land with less risk, and other planes were able to take off at the same time. After a couple of years the ship had been modified and it was back out on the water. Learning all of this before I went to California made me super intrigued and excited to learn more about while we were on the ship.
After we were came back from California, we had to get prepared for an essay we were going to write on disruption. We spent a week preparing, which sounds like a lot of time, but before you know it, it’s already time to write it. Here is my essay:
The
Historical Disruption
of Technology
Ethan Dennis
Technology has been in a constant state of disruption that has affected all of our lives in many different ways. It has affected the military throughout WWI and also at the end of WWII. It also has helped people’s causes around the world and it could have helped the hippies rebel more successfully. Rivalries in the tech world have also caused a disruption, as the top tech companies are always competing to make the newest and best thing. The pace of change is going at a faster and faster rate and as a result technology is constantly changing the world.
In both World Wars planes were a key component in changing how the wars were fought. At the beginning of WWI planes were used to scout their enemy’s, but by the end of the war they were used in dogfights and they had machine guns attached to them. Naval ships could only shoot 15 miles with their large guns, but once aircraft carriers were introduced they were able to hit a target that its hundreds of miles away. When pearl harbour happened it wasn’t as catastrophic as people thought. Although lives were lost, all of the ships that were sunk were now obsolete as the new super power had just been introduced, aircraft carriers.
In the 60’s the youth were known as hippies and back then they did not have the technology we do today. The hippies were known for rebelling against the government, and established norms, and protesting to large extent, but they did that all by word of mouth. In Little Brother the main character did something similar but, he had technology on his side. He was able to use something called xnet to communicate with people instead of using word of mouth. This was much faster and way more efficient then using word of mouth. If the hippies had something similar to technology they could have been more successful, because they failed without it.
Apple and Microsoft have always had an intense rivalry. Although they both took two different approaches to computers. Microsoft focused solely on software, while Apple focused on hardware as well. Bill Gates knew that he only had to make a software once, and license it to other computer companies such as IBM and HP. This made it so that Microsoft would spend less and make more. Even though they took different approaches to computers, they still were competing to innovate faster than each other, and some times they even built off of each other. This caused the technology to progress at a much faster rate.
I have shared with you three different examples starting at the beginning of the 20th Century, of how technology has changed our society’s. I talked about how human conflict in World Wars, has caused people to innovate and change how wars were fought. That was done through improving weapons and transportation. The youth in the 60’s were known as hippies, and they rebelled against the government, but they did not have technology to their advantage which could have immensely improved their results as they failed without it. The last topic I focused on was how the advent of the two Steve’s and Bill Gates with Paul Allen shaped the world with new innovative ideas, which in result has kept changing the world since they started their companies. Now if you think about the industrial revolution, we are currently in a bigger faster version of that, which is causing our world to be smaller, faster, and more dynamic then ever before.
Both of those assignments were great for basically the same reason. The video I made took what I had learned and put it into a descriptive video form. After watching it just shows how much I had learned on that ship. The essay on the other hand took what I had learned and put it on a piece of paper. While I was done proofreading it, I kind of took a step back and went “Holy crap!” I learned so much in just the span of 9 days. It kind of blew my mind and I am hoping that in the future I will have the oppuritunity to learn that much in that amount of time again.
