BOOK
$21
Breathless accounts of early adopters
The thing about new technologies is that they weave into our daily lives so quickly and seamlessly that any aha moments almost instantly become "been there, done that" experiences.
In my work as the director of exhibits at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, I freeze these fleeting reactions. As I prepare a show on Internet technologies, a sneak preview of Merritt Ierley's book helps to tease out the themes universal to emerging technologies versus those unique to the Net.
Ierley presents vivid, sometimes breathless accounts of Americans as their lives are transformed by their first interaction with something new: "We flew on the wings of the wind at the varied speeds of 15 to 20 miles an hour, annihilating time and space," reports an early railroad passenger. Other times, the author goes to more unusual sources. One excerpt from a 1908 phonograph manual gives what now seems a curious suggestion: "A NEW NEEDLE should be used EVERY TIME a record is played."
Ierley also delves into the cumulative process by which each technology served as a frame of reference for the next. Radio prepared the public for television, as Franklin Roosevelt illustrated when he appeared on TV proposing to "take Americans sightseeing by radio." Later, the PC was embraced by a generation adapted to the typewriter's keyboard, the TV's screen, and the telephone's instant connection. "If the computer had inexplicably arrived on the scene, say, in 1876," says the author, "it would have been so baffling as to have had no chance of acceptance other than among mathematicians and engineers."
The impressive brevity of the work - a veritable CliffsNotes on 15 technologies in 256 pages - makes the parallels really pop. Compare typewritten letters to emails: Typed missives offended turn-of-the-century Americans expecting handwritten notes, just as email today is criticized as impersonal. Or look at the struggles of early TV producers attempting to fill a three-day weekly programming schedule in 1939 ("The fare was down to 'ancient newsreel stuff such as Sponge Fishing in Florida'"). Their challenge recalls the scramble for content and repurposed material in the early days of the Web. Wondrous Contrivances is an engaging read, even for those who've never heard of punch cards.
Random House: www.randomhouse.com.
STREET CRED
RND#
Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us, by Rodney A. Brooks
Caveo Anti-Theft PC Card
Design for Community: The Art of Connecting Real People in Virtual Places, by Derek M. Powazek
Command & Conquer Renegade
Samsung SCH-N150
Entourage X
ReadMe
Music
Maximo: Ghosts to Glory
Wondrous Contrivances: Technology at the Threshold, by Merritt Ierley
Compact Theater
TinyApps.org
US Design: 1975-2000
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