blogging, computer history and the history of Metro Detroit

Selfe and Hawisher use narrated timelines as a way of linking technological developments to their wider "cultural ecologies" (p. 165).

You might have noticed this on pp. 63-69 ("cultural ecology of the 1960s an 1970s"), pp 79-82 ("cultural ecology of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s") and on pp 165-170 ("cultural ecology of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s").

In fact, if you DIDN'T notice these timelines while doing the assigned reading, you probably were stoned. Genre note: I am permitted to say "stoned" because this is my blog. The cultural ecologies are conveniently indexed on p. 256.

Selfe and Hawisher chose to compare the timeline of technological development with political and national history.

However, you can learn tres interesting stuff if you mix it up a little and compare the social history of technology to the history of a particular region.

Like, for instance, the history of Metro Detroit.

1919
Josephine Davis graduates law enforcement training as the first female police officer in Detroit. {Sugrue}

Electrical Experimenter reported that managing director Godfrey Issacs "foresees the day, not far distant, when pocket wireless telephones will be in wide use" {Timeline of Computing History, "1919"}.

1943
Ladies' Home Journal publishes the article "Do Women Have to Talk So Much" (Selfe and Hawisher, p. 166).

FHA builds concrete wall to enforce racial segregation between Birwood and Mendota streets in Northwest Detroit. The wall breaks at cross-streets, "segregating" only the backyards of houses that are adjacent to a neighboring childrens' park where young mothers gathered with their children. {see, for instance Sugrue, p. 67}

1945
Public school records show that "Why I like or do not like negroes" is a standard topic for the sixth grade arguementative essay at Van Dyke School in Northeast Detroit. "They try to mix with white people and we don't want them to", wrote a sixth grader named Mary Conk, "they wanted to live on Detroit and we didn't want them to" {Sugrue, p. 218}.

ENIAC, the first modern computer, is constructed. ENIAC's chief application was to "discriminate the sign of a number and compare quantities for equality" {Timeline of Computing History, "1945"}.

2005
Federal prosecutions under the CANSPAM Act of 2005 kick off in the northern suburb of West Bloomfield, where approximately eight spam gangs have been discovered. Ps, that is an atypically high number of spam gangs per square foot.
http://www.detnews.com/2004/technology/0404/29/a01-137416.htm
http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend22_20021122.htm

Epidemeologists discover that SPAM proliferation is a highly accurate model for the AIDS vector. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21526

A coding error by the City of Detroit "misplaces" funding for the Wellness House, a local HIV/AIDS public health organizations, in the account of another agency.
http://www.freep.com/news/health/aids31e_20040831.htm

Notice that I can get away with constructing evocative "peices" of a timeline because this is my blog. The continuuity demand is lower than in a PPT presentation. The point is to inspire directions for further research, not to "finish" an idea.