Communication and Technology are inextricably linked. The growth of communication paralleled the growth of technology. For me, that presents a great opportunity to learn about how technology and innovation develop in a specific field (in this case communicaiton), and how I could eventually be a part of that global transformation. I think this topic is interesting to me in two aspects: in terms of the past and in terms of the future.
The Past
I think that I was lucky in the sense that I grew up in the transitional phase. I grew up when technology was just at its advent. I knew what payphones were, I knew how life was without a smartphone. What's more interesting is that growing up, I went to an all-boys Jesuit Catholic school that didn't allow cellphones. As a result, I really know what life was like before the cellphone. I knew what it meant to spend lunch breaks playing kickball and koosh ball in the school's quadrangle. I knew what it was like to pass secret messages when it was actually through paper, and not through a Facebook message. To me, communication and technology came in a little bit late in life, and I'm really excited to explore how people lived their lives even before there was any much great technology. What did people use before telegraphs? Before the mail? Were there ingenious ways they used to communicate?
The Future
The other part of this is the future of communication and technology. Will we see telekinetic forms of communication in the future? Will we be able to communicate feelings not through words but through tactile senses, for example? How does technology affect our relationship with other people and how we communicate with them? Do we become isolationist just like E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops? What is to happen to us when technology 'rules' the world?
All in all, I'm really excited about all the learning I will get from the class. I really think the material is engaging, and I really want to learn as much as I can from the class. I'm ready to try new things, imagine how we will communicate 100 years from now, and just dream big about communication and technology. So, let's get started?