Hello, Internet.

 

So, as I mentioned in my last post we recently took a class trip to California, specifically San Diego, San Jose, and San Francisco. We did this trip as part of a social studies unit on disruption, and specifically with some focus on how technology is disruptive.

Now, in order to fully understand what this unit was all about, you need to understand exactly what disruption means. The word disruption has some negative connotations, but in essence it just means something that interrupts or changes something else. A lot of the disruptions that we looked at in this unit were positive.

On the technology side, we focussed on newer technology, and we spent a lot of time talking about Silicon Valley (not to mention visiting it), both as a disruption itself, and as the birthplace of a lot of disruptive companies and technology. Some of the major companies that we discussed that came out of Silicon Valley or have headquarters there include Google, Apple, Facebook, HP, Twitter, Intel, and Instagram. In fact, I made a video about the history of Instagram, and the story of how it disrupted the incumbents of social media at the time.

We also learned a lot about Silicon Valley in general; what it is, what’s happening there, and why it’s such a big disruption. We watched some videos in class to learn about it, as well as watching Pirates of Silicon Valley outside of class time. Additionally, we learned about the history of Fairchild and Robert Noyce prior to Intel.

I took some excellent, relevant and very academic notes on these videos including:

 

– “It doesn’t matter if your name is Jeremy”

– Don’t stalk Tim Cook

– *woot woot suspense woot woot*

– “Fairchild? We’re gonna CrUsH yOu GuYs!!!”

– Parents = obstacles

– TMNT shower curtain

 

…and, you know, a lot of other stuff that actually helped summarize what the videos were talking about. The gist is that Silicon Valley is a place where people go to work on start ups and try to connect with investors, as well as other people to help with their startups, in the hopes of becoming the next big thing. As for the Fairchild video, it explained the history of Fairchild beginning with Shockley Semiconductors: William Shockley discovered the semiconductor while working on the east coast, came over to the west coast to be near his ailing mother, started a company called Shockley Semiconductors and hired a bunch of Stanford students (who were close to geniuses) to work for him, all went well for a little while, and then Shockley’s ego got the better of him and he started treating his employees terribly, leading eight of them to leave the company and go start their own company, Fairchild, led by Robert Noyce. Fairchild would go on to provide important technology to NASA during the Space Race, and to improve semiconductors quite significantly so computers could be made more compact and work better, before the company split and the founders moved onto their own different companies (such as Intel), known as the “Fairchildren”.

 

 

 

For the end of the unit, we all wrote essays answering the unit question: How has technology acted as a disruption with its creation throughout history?

 

I started out with the thesis that technology is disruptive because it allows us access to information we might not otherwise have. From there, I created an essay outline, during the making of which I got bored and decided to represent each point with a quippy headline/strange nonfiction book title, and a subheading, which were as follows:

 

Intro

Paragraph one: Info we’re given

Trump’s Twitter: an insight into the president’s thoughts (AKA: holy guacamole how did this guy get to be president?)
Worldwide news and the speed that information travels: What allows us to read articles online but Dennis the Menace in print
Anticensorship: internet friends, social media, the blogosphere, and other things that allow us to unveil the truth

Paragraph two: Info we go get

People are hacking, security is lacking: the potential for people to get access to your personal info, people who overshare on the internet and don’t bother with being secure about it, how this could ruin your future job
Tweet, delete, repeat: why deleting stuff doesn’t stop people from being able to access it, and how the public can pull up information from throughout the years in a way they weren’t always able to
Getting the Googley eyes for someone: our innate need to cyberstalk people when we meet them and how this is potentially helpful/damaging

Paragraph three: Info we didn’t used to have

George Washington Is Instagram Famous: posing the question of how different history would be with our current technology
Newsprince: How the newspaper used to lord over us all and what it would be like if the paper was still our main/only source of info

Conclusion

 

Then we were given time in class to write our essays. I didn’t use every point in my outline, but chose some of them to elaborate on, and a few specifically to connect to the book we read for this unit. I ended up with this as my essay:

 

How Technology Has Acted as a Disruption Throughout History

 

Throughout history, humans have developed more and more complex tools, or
technology. This technology changes the way we live; we eat, sleep, think, speak, and act differently from any other animal. In short, technology disrupts our daily lives. One of the things technology, especially more recent technology such as computer, the internet and social media, has interrupted is our flow of information. Technology disrupts how, when, and how much we receive information, allows us to get information that wouldn’t come easily to us otherwise, and allows us to have and share much more information than we did in the past.

First of all, technology means we are being given more information, from more sources,
some of which is much less filtered than it once was. A good example of this comes in the form of the twitter account of Donald Trump, the current US president. Until recently, almost anything a president said to the publication large would have to be planned, and usually happened via a public appearance in person or on tv. However, the last few presidents have had access to social media sites that allow them to share any thought at any time, unfiltered and without much planning. Many articles, books, and videos talking about Trump’s presidency have discussed statements from his twitter, which he uses regularly to publicly comment on recent or future events. Trump’s twitter allows us to have an insight into his real thoughts and plans, in a way we haven’t had with many people of power throughout history. A Time article described a series of tweets from the president as “angry, sometimes profane and occasionally misspelled outbursts” that “gave the world a glimpse into what was going on in [Trump’s] head” and “brought to light what it’s like to work for [Trump].” Of course, it’s not just Trump who can now share things unfiltered. The internet allows anyone to share opinions and information on the spot, through social media, blogging, or commenting on existing sites. Groups of people who would not have been able to publicly share their thoughts in the past are now able to in a matter of minutes, and as a result we now have access to new, uncensored opinions and information. People from different parts of the world can easily speak directly to one another and talk about where and how they live. There are tutorials and instructions teaching anyone who wants to learn how to do a multitude of things. For better or for worse, information is being shared more than ever before.

However, not all the information shared with technology is public. At the very least, it’s
not all meant to be public. According to a Quartzy article, “few of us deliberately show our whole selves online or elsewhere, even when we’re trying to seem… honest.”. Many people have private information protected with passwords or other forms of required identification. Others still overshare what should be private information, which can lead to security problems. Sometimes, people overshare and then realize their mistake and delete whatever they posted. However, the speed at which information travels means that just pressing delete doesn’t necessarily ensure something is gone forever. Technology gives people the power to find information even if it’s not immediately presented to them, which can be an issue depending on their intentions. The book Little Brother has a running theme of security, lack thereof, and people hacking or cheating the system with technology. Within the first chapter the main character, Marcus, evades various kinds of security technology at his school by either shutting them down or finding a way to “confuse” them into not working. Throughout the book, Marcus is able to hack into almost anything he needs to– while simultaneously taking extra precautions to make sure nobody can do the same thing to him. While Marcus, as the protagonist, has the right intentions for hacking to get past security, the things he does in the book mirror the not-so-wholesome actions of real life people. As much as technology helps to keep our information safe, it also makes it possible for people to gain access to information that they shouldn’t have.

One of the most significant things about technology allowing us access to information is
the sheer amount of information we are able to access now in comparison to the past. At one point, people got almost all their knowledge of world events from either a newspaper or speaking directly to another person. Learning about things from such limited sources meant limited information, and less chance of misinformation being corrected. With the rise of radio, tv, and now the internet, people are able to find hundreds of different sources of information on the same thing. They’re also able to find information on exactly what they’re looking for, quickly and readily. This allows people to learn much more, make sure what they’re learning is correct, and find multiple points of view on things. It also allows people to easily save or share the information once they have it, so knowledge travels faster, and can be kept accurate for a longer amount of time. Had the technologies we use today been able to exist much earlier, we might perceive history very differently.

All in all, technology is disruptive because it changes our ability to get and share
information, be it information that is given to us or information that we seek out ourselves, and it lets us have information that we wouldn’t have had in the past. Technology not only disrupts how we get information, but also when we get information, how much information we can find, and what information that is. As communicating information is incredibly crucial to our ability to function as humans, technology will most likely continue to disrupt how and when we get information, and how much information we get. Technology could go far enough to make the ways that we share information today seem primitive, but who knows what will happen? That’s not information we have access to yet.

 

Alongside our essays, we were also asked to each create a video, podcast, or puppet show with a partner about how one of the places we visited in San Diego acted as a disruption. My partner and I chose to create a podcast about High Tech High, a high school where we spent time with a grade nine class for a couple days. High Tech High is a charter school that focuses on using project based learning to help prepare kids for the real world, a bit like PLP. High Tech High also works to create equal learning opportunities for students, choosing students to attend via a lottery system by zip code, with more spots available to the lower income areas that typically might not have as nice an education readily available.

 

 

This is the podcast that we created:

 

 

 

So, I’m off to go be disruptive.

 

Toodles.