FAMST 101D Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Pan-American Exposition, The Great Exhibition, World'S Columbian Exposition
Document Summary
Era of growing institutions and large scale social interactions. Tv promised to look beyond and behind spatial barriers. Tv also promised to offer visual mastery and unity across space. "the white city" - 27 million visitors (1/4 us population) Buffalo was the 5th largest city in the us at this time. Central feature of utopian discourse about the future. Common criticism is that technologies are distractive, flippant, trivial. Pulvermacher belt - sending electrical charges to body parts to "restore vim, vigor, vitality" Concerns: reproductive efficiency and the future of society. Electricity was bringing a lot of anxiety to people, manifested as physical. Neither utopian or dystopian, but when you both love and hate. Coexisting but opposite attitudes or feelings towards a person, object, or idea. Belief that the technology is actually driving society in a certain direction. Questions to ask about "new" technology (straying away from technological determinism) Process of social adaptation that limits its radical potential.
