ShmoopTube

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another thing to think about is what can make technological histories

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problematic? well despite what the friendly hosts of kids shows told us [man thinks sitting at a desk]

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back in the day it's totally ok to be negative sometimes. sorry there Barney. by

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now we know that no area of history is without its little pitfalls and problems.

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we all know about Eurocentrism presentism biased sources and dangerous

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assumptions. we're all good and skeptical by this point so we'll keep this short.

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one of the problems we might run into in our study of information history is

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literate bias. but Western folks tend to think that civilization equals writing.

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and non literate people equals savages. once a dangerous and unfair way to think

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about it and oh so wrong. well cultures and societies without written languages

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have had rich histories. they were full of all the drama war power and beauty [men duel dressed in Romanesque clothing]

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we'd expect from a Game of Thrones episode. they just didn't write things

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down. instead they often had artistic or symbolic systems and complicated oral

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traditions designed to preserve the past. so even though we'll be spending most of

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our time with literate cultures. don't be fooled. we also have to be on the lookout

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for the kind of bias we modern folks have when looking back on earlier times.

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sure we live in the Golden Age of communication in the internet but we

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need to be careful about always thinking that new stuff is automatically better

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than the old. sometimes it might not necessarily be true and that kind of [one man laughs at another]

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attitude can blind us to seeing things objectively. also what is generally

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snotty and obnoxious. no doubt the twentieth century has seen a ton of new

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information technologies duh. but it's still not great if we act like people in

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the past were cavemen had no methods of sharing knowledge so they were stupid

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right? even cavemen had their ways. yep they mostly communicated about what

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animals they were stabbing at the time but those were the pertinent issues of

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the day. well we also need to be careful of class bias. remember how we said a [cave men draw on walls]

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second ago that information technologies often favor some groups over others? well

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those privileged groups have tended to be upper-class educated white males. but

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just because they were the doing the bulk of the writing printing

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in radioing doesn't mean theirs is the only story to be told .people of every

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stripe have a part in this story and we need to keep our eyes open to that as

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best we. can closing our eyes can lead to us missing important things like that.

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also it can lead to you know tripping on stuff. [person slips on wet floor]

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