The 20th Century and Information

On the first day of class this semester, one of my professors asked the class, "How would we find out what CRE (Chemical Reaction Engineering) is about?" "Look it up on Wiki," one of the students shouted out, and the rest of the class laughed. The professor replied, "No, that's not what I was thinking. I was thinking of looking in the textbook."

It's not so much that he said he would look it the textbook. What is interesting to me is that he said "No" to looking it up on Wiki. He thought it was a joke. I don't know about the rest of my classmates, but I know I laughed because I thought, knowingly, "Yep, that's what I would do. That's the easiest, quickest way of finding the answer." It is no joke. Be careful there, professor--your lack of digital civilization is showing.

So what do I know about the two topics I've been given, the 20th Century and Information? Well, I know that the 20th Century revolutionized the way information is shared more than once. First with television and then with the internet. I think this century is very important for the topic of information.

The connectivity of the world and availability of information has definitely reformed many aspects of the world: business, education, scientific progress. Even though there is all the bad rep for the digital world being against open science, I think overall, the digital world has had a net positive on scientific development. It allows a lot of scientific findings to be quickly available and easy to search. Other areas that have been reformed are politics, government, and even war. The internet has allowed groups to coordinate riots using social media.

What I know about the 20th Century:
Prohibition
WWI
WWII
The Great Depression
Invention of the Assembly Line
Invention of the Air plane
Invention of the Personal Computer
Invention of the Internet

Pretty much a huge leap for technological advances.


That's all I can think of that is extremely important.