The term I choose relating to the modern information society was cellphones. Looking at the three
newspapers, the first article that I found with the release of the cellphone
was in 1983 in the New York Times. They explained the phone as not waiting for
a dial tone and the voice came through crisp and clear. Cellphones also expanded
the capacity and improved the quality. Their plan for the future was to see a
phone that is small and light enough to fit in a briefcase or back pocket.
Cellular service was only offered in 30 large cities and it was a surprise at
that time that several different calls could be made at once. In the Chicago
Tribune it talked about how the sale of cell phones slowed down around 1985. There
was a large market at first and it slowly declined, but talked about how this
was considered the normal growth of the industry. There was a huge difference
between the older verse newer articles. The recent scholarly articles I read
from 2014 talked about cell phones as a distraction in school and driving. It
is interesting that they are talking about how cell phones are a distraction in
vehicles when they were initially created for people to use while driving. Also,
another article in ProQuest discussed how cell phones are related to brain
tumors. It proceeds to say you should not hold the phone up to your ear nor
sleep with it near your head. This is information that no one would have even
thought about 30 years ago. The main idea of cellphones has remained the same
over the last three decades, however many new issues have arisen since the
beginning of their creation.
I think it is really interesting to read about how the cell phone sales slowed down a while after their release. I would not have guessed they would have had a remission like that after their initial popularity. Also I liked how you looked at the lack of knowledge people had about cell phones 30 years ago! I wonder what kind of lack of information we have about our current technologies.
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