Unit 5 - the Age of Technology

Unit 5- The Age of technology

Artifacts are how we learn what life was like years ago. We can determine how people lived by the items that they used. When years past and people want to know how we lived what will they think? An artifact that is the embodiment of what the United States has turned into is the computer.

If this question was asked three years ago I would have said a perfect artifact would have been television but now you can watch TV on your tablet, computer, and phone. Telephones have now become portable computers that you can make calls on and the tablets are computers that people can read digital books on. Computers are everywhere people are constantly checking face book statuses, MySpace pages, catching up on the favorite shows will waiting for their doctors appointments or on their lunch breaks.

The culture of the United States has become a digital age with an "I need it now" culture. People enjoy the convince of having everything they believe that they need at their fingertips. They can order things while at lunch with friends and catch up via the internet to friends that are in other countries or cities. Our society has become a social media outlet via the computer and everyone seems to be enjoying it.

The computer was originally created in 1936 by Konrad Zuse and over the years it changed and adapted to become more user friendly and easier to program and change out parts. By doing this the computer was able to be used by the average user. In the mid 1980's the computer not only become more personable but financially achievable to the ordinary user. Computers were also starting to become popular in work environments with more companies purchasing the computers for their businesses. This allowed their workers to store data in a secure place and reducing the cost and space for file folders.

There a couple of different influences that helped in the influence of people wanting computers in their home. The first one was the world wide web. Tim Berners-Lee was the leading developer of the internet or world wide web. HTTP and HTML was needed in order to create the web pages with the internet used from 1989-1993. Once people realized they can could look up items online and check email it was phase one of it becoming more popular. Chat rooms started to spring up which lead to social networking sites. The social networking sites really influenced the internet becoming even more popular and used every day.

The computer will be passed on through generation and generation. The future can hold many different scenarios for the computer. But one thing is for sure that the computer will on get lighter as time goes on and be able to do more things. Right the phone computers would be the smallest with the tablet and min laptops coming right behind it. The televisions with computer capabilities are weighing less every year. People like big screens so