This video, released by Syracuse University, details the technological advancements that took place in America from 1850-1910, and explains their impact on the nations industry. Within that 40 year span, such inventions as the telephone, phonograph and electric lamps became a part of everyday life.
Cars and phones lead to explosive growth of cities and enriched the lives of the people of the period. Currently, we find ourselves at the close of the opening quarter of the 21st century. And our technology and industries look drastically different now as they did at this centuries beginning. This is because we are in the middle of a digital revolution. Today our lives practically belong to the iphone, and yet just over 10 years ago, the iphone was still in development. Just as referenced in the video with the first telephone leading to increased urbanization, the release of iphone has changed everything from work and education to communication and even social expectations.
Steve Jobs introduces iphone, 2007.
Indeed the rapid speed at which technology is advancing today shadows that of the late 1800s and early 1900s. The impact and infrastructure of our digital world was not fully seen until the covid-19 pandemic.
From the onset of the pandemic our advanced and widespread technology allowed for a (all things considered) seamless transition to an isolated, yet functioning society. Without the pioneers of the Y2K era the covid-19 pandemic would have crippled our ability to work and continue in our education. Indeed the rapid introduction and development of online technology is a comparable miracle to the advancements seen in the technological revolution of the 20th century
But not all is the same, technology once meant larger urban centers, higher skyscrapers and a more mobile population. However in the digital revolution technology such as instant communication has gutted cities once springing with corporate offices find themselves with fewer tenants as employers embrace a 'work from home model'.
While, for the time being, the 21st century's' roaring 20s has been placed on hold by a pandemic, echos of the roaring 1920s and the fruits of the innovators labor can still be seen today. Operation Warp Speed was a public-private partnership funded by the U.S government that delivered several covid-19 vaccines in a record breaking 285 days. And since then, our world has been moving back to its pre-pandemic self. Now this is not a pandemic blog, but without the footprint of American technology and industry, and the politics of the progressives, the digital revolution and operation warp speed might have left us paralyzed in the pandemic.
The fruits of the second age of miracles both parallel and differ from that of the first, but the pace of innovation and development far outpaces anything mankind has seen.
Urbanization, and the Rise of the American Suburb. At the turn of the 20th century nearly 40% of Americans lived in cities, and that number continued to climb. Urbanization and the expansion of cities are a hallmark of the 20th century. As we can see from this graph, the growth experienced during the 1880-1920s in New York was quite intense. The rate was explosive, but the graph shows that when the bubble finally berst, levels returned to only slightly above those of the pre boom. Of course such extreme trends are not sustainable, and a normal rate of growth returned. The forecast for cities looks very different in 2021 than it did in 1921. The difference is found in a mixture of places. On a global level urban centers are predicted to increase and host most of the world's population. However, these numbers are pre pandemic, indeed the pandemic era has not been friendly to Americans urban centers. Now,...
The early 20th Century in America is known as the progressive era. The progressives were a political and social reform group that sought to make American society a better place to live and work. They aimed to do this by holding corporations accountable and exposing the corruption commonly seen within government at the time. As seen in the political cartoon, corporations at this time were unregulated and often openly interfered in the legislative process in order to assure their needs were catered to. While the progressives of the early 20th century passed landmark legislation which helped solve the problem of corporate hands in politics, nearly a quarter into the 21st century, the love affair between congress and corporate dollars is alive and well. The cartoon above shows how modern politicians claim to be against corporations involvement in politics while at the same time demanding...
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