Skip to main content

Week 3


The topic that I found most interesting in this week’s topics was Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times silent film. I liked this film the most not only because of the comedic capability of Charlie Chaplin, but also because of the socioeconomic commentary about the society in the United States during the 1930’s and 1940’s. This was a time period where industrialization really took off, and a large majority of workers were showing up to factories to stand as a part of an assembly line all day. This was after the Great Depression, so although these people were happy to be employed, they still recognized that they were just seen as replaceable laborers. 


Basically Charlie Chaplin shows in this film how workers were just extensions of the machines and didn’t do anything to stimulate their brains, since most of their jobs had been replaced by machines, or in a sense robots.


Henry Ford started the assembly line work for the mass production of the automobile in 1913, which did not take too long to extend to all types of factories. The Great Depression lasted from 1929-1939 with the film being released in 1936.


                                                **(9:00-11:30 important)**
However, now it seems as though the opposite is happening. About 100 years ago people started to worry that humans were just an extension of machines, and basically becoming robotic as they did the same thing over and over day in and day out. Now, after watching the Rodney Brooks Ted Talk, robots seem to be taking over our lives and becoming more and more human. It is unbelievable the technology these robots have and their eye motor control, so it will be interesting in the future to see how the relationships between workers and robots changes again.

Amadeo, Kimberly. “What Happened During the Great Depression?” The Balance, 5 Mar. 2018, www.thebalance.com/the-great-depression-of-1929-3306033.

Aaron. “Anthology of Ideas.” Major Themes of "Modern Times" by Chaplin, Anthology of Ideas, 24 Apr. 2006, anthologyoi.com/movies-major-themes-of-modern-times-by-chaplin/.
Brooks, Rodney. “Robots Will Invade Our Lives.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, TED Talk, Feb. 2003, www.ted.com/talks/rodney_brooks_on_robots.
“Ford's Assembly Line Starts Rolling.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fords-assembly-line-starts-rolling.
“Modern Times (1936).” IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/title/tt0027977/.

Amadeo, Kimberly. “What Happened During the Great Depression?” The Balance, 5 Mar. 2018, www.thebalance.com/the-great-depression-of-1929-3306033.

Aaron. “Anthology of Ideas.” Major Themes of "Modern Times" by Chaplin, Anthology of Ideas, 24 Apr. 2006, anthologyoi.com/movies-major-themes-of-modern-times-by-chaplin/.
Brooks, Rodney. “Robots Will Invade Our Lives.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, TED Talk, Feb. 2003, www.ted.com/talks/rodney_brooks_on_robots.
“Ford's Assembly Line Starts Rolling.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fords-assembly-line-starts-rolling.
“Modern Times (1936).” IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/title/tt0027977/.

Amadeo, Kimberly. “What Happened During the Great Depression?” The Balance, 5 Mar. 2018, www.thebalance.com/the-great-depression-of-1929-3306033.

Aaron. “Anthology of Ideas.” Major Themes of "Modern Times" by Chaplin, Anthology of Ideas, 24 Apr. 2006, anthologyoi.com/movies-major-themes-of-modern-times-by-chaplin/.
Brooks, Rodney. “Robots Will Invade Our Lives.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, TED Talk, Feb. 2003, www.ted.com/talks/rodney_brooks_on_robots.
“Ford's Assembly Line Starts Rolling.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fords-assembly-line-starts-rolling.
“Modern Times (1936).” IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/title/tt0027977/.

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 18, 2018 at 2:15 PM

    I like how you focused on a film that illustrates the impacts of industrialization to society. Although that film is based on a time period from eighty to ninety years ago, you bridge it to the long term effects industrialization has on technology and society today.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 6

The topic this week was Art and Biology. I don’t think I have ever learned much about this cross-section of fields, so I was really intrigued in a lot of different topics presented. However, I really wanted to focus on and learn more about Marta De Menezes work, specifically her project “Nature?” Marta is originally from Portugal and her work Nature? Was done in 1999 (Nature? 2012). I found this work to be extremely interesting, because I have never heard of artwork that literally lives and dies. Although this was her most well received project, it did have some controversy, which Marta is quick to dismiss. She explains that just because the butterfly is manipulated there is no reason to call it man-made or artificial (Silva, 2008). The way in which Marta does the modification is with an extremely thin needle paired with heat to redesign the wing when they are still in their cocoons (Reinert, 2004). Since the genes remain unchanged the new design of the wings is no...
3 comments
Read more

Week 4

Reflecting upon the video lectures from this week, I found it very interesting to recognize how true it is that most scientific and medical advances are made as a result of war. Usually when we think of prosthetic limbs we think of people who lost an arm or leg. However, with the Third Hand Project that was talked about in lecture, they weren’t replacing any limbs but instead adding addition help. Upon researching this further, the researcher was disappointment with the lack of accuracy that this robotic arm had and its lack of precision when receiving the muscle contractions from the hand. This is how I feel that prosthetic limbs vary whether they are supplementing or replacing a body part. My uncle had a prosthetic hand, because of medical complications when he was born. However, he always was so grateful for everything the mechanical hand could do and appreciated it even if it wasn’t perfect. The expectation that comes with the mechanical hand depends on the...
2 comments
Read more

Week 8

This week in particular, I had a hard time picking a topic that I wanted to focus on. Even after watching all of the video lectures I still had a hard time connecting the idea of nanotechnology to art, as I felt many of the topics covered didn’t completely relate to the art sector. Then after I read more about art and nanotechnology I found Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau’s work of creating an invisible sculpture. The way they were able to achieve this was with a wireless magnetic force-feedback, which let viewers interact with invisible nanoparticles in order to create a malleable sculpture that changes as people interact with it. They must wear a magnetic ring that allows them to physically feel the repulsions, attractions, and sometimes even shock to help them discover the foundation of the sculpture. The shape of this invisible sculpture changes based how people interact with the magnetic rings and how many people are viewing it (John Curtain Gallery). ...
2 comments
Read more