I think Marconi's focus on "imagined use" of his technology goes to show how talented he was at marketing himself. When new technologies develop they are usually clunky and expensive and difficult to implement to everyday use. Getting the public to believe in what the technology could become, beyond what it is now, to get people to invest in a product that wasn't yet producing the results that were hoped for.

The influence that Marconi had on the way that the history of technology is studied and taught has had a long-lasting impact that we still see today. Especially in the tech/social media industries of today. People like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk trying to make themselves into 'great men' by attempting to create products that have much larger implications than just one function. Like Mark Zuckerberg changing the name of his company to Meta and creating the metaverse and marketing it as a technology that will change the world by implementing virtual reality and augmented reality into day to day life. Also Elon Musk buying Twitter and changing the name to X and marketing the change as Twitter becoming something much bigger than an online message board but a universal online 'global village.'

The ideal of science as a collective effort for the betterment of society rather than an individual effort in the pursuit of capital gains allowed amateur experimenters and inventors to thrive in the United States in the late 1800s and very early 1900s. Amateurs deserve a lot more credit than they are given for the advancement of wireless technology. Prior to the radio act of 1912, many radio stations were run by amateurs and it was an unregulated, unrestricted market. There were two sides to this. On one hand it fostered freedom of expression and revolutionized access to niche information. On the other hand, there were no safeguards against misinformation and malicious use of the technology. The radio act of 1912 essentially shut down amateur radio for good by requiring licenses. While this offered protection against the negative aspects of amateur radio, it was also a tipping point that favored corporate interests because large corporations were the ones that could afford to go through the bureaucratic process of operating a radio station.

Could Elon Musk be seen as today's Guglielmo Marconi? I see a lot of parallels in the way that both of them took sole credit for their inventions and seek to create an empire based on them. Marconi sought to make himself synonymous with wireless telegraphy the same way that Musk is trying to make himself synonymous with not just electric cars but the future of transportation technology.

I think that the "great men" dynamic has shaped technological developments and how inventors behaved, especially towards each other. The legal battles between Lee de Forest and Edwin H. Armstrong are a prime example of this. The two inventors were embroiled in several legal battles over the use of the alternating circuit in wireless telephony. I think it is important to ask the question of whether this technology could have been developed faster and more efficiently if the two of them were willing to work together and share their expertise to create a product that would benefit the greater of society instead of fighting over who would have the right to profit off of the new technology.

This really goes to show how the military really felt about women at the time. Using them only as objects for their labor and pushing them to the side once they were no longer useful. Historically women have worked incredibly hard with very little reward which still continues to be a problem today.

This shows just how pervasive sexism was at the time. People were so against the idea of women being in the military that they would for any way to exclude them, even if it was doing civilian work. It's not wonder that sexism still persists today because this was not that long ago. People still assume that women are less fitted for certain professions, simply because they are women. Even if they have the exact same qualifications.

It's frustrating to see that even in a time when women were doing incredibly important work and took on great responsibility for America's efforts in the war, that the patriarchal notion of women being seen as "weak" and in need of rescue still persisted. It shows how pervasive objectification of women can be.

This reminds of the discourse surrounding voting rights today. For example voter ID laws and complicated registration processes make it more difficult for people who experience poverty to be able to vote, and people who experience poverty are statistically more likely to enroll in the military. This connects classism, voting rights, and military participation today in the same way that sexism, voting rights, and military participation were connected during world war 1.

right off the bat this is a very interesting take on American military culture and its connection to civil rights. The examples in this first paragraph show how access to civil rights has been connected to participation in war and imperialism. Participation in war and imperialism is seen as something that makes someone "fully American" and therefore worthy of the same civil rights as everyone else.

This goes to the idea that media affects the publics perception of reality, and of history. As the reading states, only a select few people were actually wealthy enough to live their lives like the ones on television shows of the time. It was more about promoting a certain ideal of American Life to the public, which ultimately was just a way to sell fancy new dishwashers.

I wonder how much the economy of the time played a role in this dynamic. Today there are many more households where both parents work because they simply cannot afford not to. Many more people are also choosing not to have children altogether. Conservatives often allude to a decline in family values as the cause of the decrease in cases of the nuclear family unit, however personally I believe it has more to do with the sky high price of owning a home, and the increasing inaccessibility of good, high paying jobs. According to CMS Mortgage the median home value in 1950 adjusted for inflation was $79,063, in 2020 it was $336,900. https://cmsmortgage.com/throwback-thursday-much-housing-prices-risen-since-1950/#:~:text=But%20what%20may%20come%20as,That's%20quite%20a%20jump!

The author of this text is choosing to be transparent about which content is included and which is omitted. This limits (but does not eliminate) the potential for bias.

Documentations of history are easily prone to bias because it is rarely possible to include all events and facts in one document. Therefore the document is made from the perspective of the person preparing it. The person who decides what to include and what not to include.

There tends to be 2 reactions to new technological developments. Some are hopeful of the new connections it will form and others are worried about technology going "too far."