“Virtual World's Fair” Project/Group Presentation (80 points)
Project Topic Ideas
Background:
At various moments throughout this semester, our “texts” for study will be those late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cultural celebrations of technology linked with social progress—the World’s Fair. Throughout Europe and the United States, as we will see, these fairs showcased numerous new technological developments and created an overarching master-narrative that married western progress to innovation—creating essentially a utopian “world of tomorrow” through technology. Of course, all narratives “leave some things out” and are open to counterclaims, counternarratives, and critiques for what they imply; World’s Fair narratives are of course no exception (as we will see during the course of the semester).
One key answer to the question, "Why were these fairs so popular in the late nineteenth century?" seems to respond that this is the era in which a modern idea of "magic" seems to materialize: this is the era that promised progress through the mastery over nature and its forces, yet to some extent still contained a wonderous mystification over how that progress actually will come to pass. Of course this promise of progress hidden behind a mystifying technique is a major theme in the texts we will have looked at for unit one; Norris's The Pit, Stone's Wall Street, and Larson's Devil in the White City, all to some extent use the mystifying language of economic speculation as the basis for conceptualizing progress. In addition, all three texts to some extent also begin to wed the technological to the economic in this work of promising progress. (Perhaps Larson makes this link more evident than the other two, but still....) The product that this promise projects, I suggest, is "the future" as a concept as we know it today.
Goal:
This group project asks that students place themselves in the role of nineteenth-century presenters at a world’s fair. Groups will choose one nineteenth- or early twentieth-century technology (up until 1915) to present to other virtual fairgoers. The primary goal behind this virtual exhibition is not just to show to common, non-technical experts-- the typical fairgoer-- how a given technology works (although that will be an important element), but
- why it is important for “our” (nineteenth century) world,
- why it came to be invented (what “problems” did it solve),
- how this particular invention might be better than others that already exist (gaslight versus electric light bulb, or the Lumiere brothers’ cinematographe versus Edison’s kinetoscope, or the telephone versus the telegraph, for example), etc.
Answering these sub questions, then, will lead you to the ultimate answer to the question this group project poses: how does your chosen nineteenth-century technology work culturally? What narrative about the present and future does it tell? If McLuhan and Brown are right-- that is, "technology, far from being dependent on scientific neutrality, is and has been an objectification of divisions within society" (Brown 132)-- what social relations and divisions are petrified into the technology you have chosen to study?
Strategies:
As we will see, World’s Fairs, even virtual ones, are very “space-dependent”—i.e. part of the success of their narratives is having the fairgoer thoroughly engrossed physically, visually, by the technologies they display. (Of course, then, all “virtual reality” technologies hold World’s Fairs as their ancestors.) For your projects, I ask that you put together your presentation answering the above questions on a group collaborative web project that successfully incorporates visuals and text. Your web page, accompanied by a poster that will be used to attract the typical fairgoer as well as highlight the main points, will be presented at our virtual World’s Fair, open to the Georgia Tech public at the Library East Commons during the final week of the semester. Your group will get the opportunity to interact with these virtual fairgoers by explaining your project’s answers to the above questions. The presentations will be in the class period of the semester, in lieu of a final exam.
I give you this assignment early in the semester to give you ample opportunity to brainstorm, research, and draft this project in your groups. You probably will want to set your own timeline for the completion of this project early on; I think you should probably spend the first three weeks brainstorming for a topic/browsing the library to see what’s out there and what your group may be interested in. Spend the next four weeks in extensive research in the archives/honing your group’s thesis statement. The final month could then be spent drafting and refining your web projects and preparing your presentation.
Audience:
Assume the audience for these projects to be typical late nineteenth-century fairgoers/speculators-- peope also interested in the (if somewhat vague) utopian potentials wrought up in nineteenth century technology. They will by no means be "experts" in any one field, just common folks with a general interest in your subject. They will be interested in how something physically "works" of course, so your group will need to think about how they can demonstrate that without "getting too technical."
In many ways, the texts we'll be reading for this semester will be the most useful in imagining who your audience is, what they know or do not know, what they believe, value, prioritize, what interests them, etc. As you continue to draft this project, finding answers to these questions will of course shape your thesis statement as well as shape how you present that technology to that audience. So, early on come up with answers to these questions--
- who is our audience?
- What do they know or don't they know (about technology? about culture?)?
- What do they believe and value?
- What are their priorities and interests?
Of course, our texts for the semester will give you fantastic clues to help you answer these questions: What can you tell about those who are the readers of Norris, Dixon, the Edisonades, the early motion pictures, or Donnelly? What kind of people are described in Bledstein, Larson, Tichi, Brown, the Steam Punk narratives, Pynchon, or The Prestige? (This latter film is quite direct in describing its audience. For example, John Cutter (Michael Caine) starts out by describing the audience thusly "you are looking for the secret, but you won't find it, because, of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be ... fooled.")
Format:
Because these will be Virtual World's Fair presentations, it's best to think of the format of this project as having three distinct layers, all of which have a specific role in interracting with our Virtual World's Fair attendees. The first layer of the format of your project, then, should be the poster which should attempt to draw an audience in by highlighting and visualizing the key points of your argument and technology-- what are some of the basics of how your technology works, why it is important, how you envision it will be used, how it is better than other technologies already in existence, etc.
The second layer, will be an oral interaction with our fairgoer once their interest has been piqued by your poster. This will be your group's opportunity to go even further into some of the details suggested by your poster, as well as offer an opportunity to answer questions about that technology. (So, you should probably practice this and brainstorm possible questions a trypical fairgoer may ask you, such as "is this technology something that is safe for me to bring into my home? Is it something I could afford?" etc.)
The third and most important layer for this project will be the website-- an opportunity for you to go into extreme depth-- using both visual aids and words-- in showing your audience both how your chosen nineteenth century technology works, why it's important, how and why it came to be invented (what improvements did it make, what contemporary problems did it solve, and why is it better than any other things "out there" that have attempted to sole this problem), and what narrative about "the future" it suggests. Each group’s web page will be about 1000 words in length and need to incorporate visuals where appropriate. The research you gather from many of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century periodicals will be the material you use to help deomonstrate and prove your points.
I strongly urge the groups to use a wiki webpage in the early stages of this project. I will show the class how they can set one of these up early in the semester; you can utilize these wikis as both process and product; wikis are webpages that are very easy for the community to edit and share ideas in a web format that can also look like your final product, if your group so chooses. If the group wants to later use a regular web page, let me know; I can reserve space on LCC servers for your group's project.
Checkpoints:
In order to assure the success of this Virtual World's Fair, I have built in to the semester calendar 3 key checkpoints in which I want you to have accomplished a few goals:
- February 19, Checkpoint #1. Narrow your topics/subject technolgies down to no more than 3. We will have opportunities to brainstorm for ideas in class, and I will bring some sample periodicals that will hopefully help generate those creative juices. We will be meeting this day in the library to go over research methods.
- April 2, Checkpoint #2. Honing in on thesis statements stemming from your research. Your group should have substantial research done on this project by this time-- nearly completed with the research, in fact.
- April 16, Checkpoint #3. Early draft of your posters/webpages to share for constructive feedback from the class.
- April 24, Virtual World's Fair at Library East Commons
Research: Some late 19th- or early 20th-century texts that may be of use:
(Thanks especially to Sherri Brown, GT Librarian, for helping to compile this)
Not only will these texts be useful for images that can be used, but they will also give you hints as to how they were received and how they were seen as important, noteworthy, or remarkable to the nineteenth century audience/culture. (This is, of course, one of the major aspects of your research project-- finding out how something works culuturally will require you to see how it was received by that culture!) Plus, they might also give you a hint as to how the devices/technolgies/inventions themselves work. Use them both to help hone in on a topic and to find more details/information/support that help prove your thesis statement about how your chosen technology works culturally. Of course, your topics/resources are not limited to texts on these lists. Hopefuly, this will give you a start, though.
Suggested Periodicals
A great place to start is through Engineering Village joining Compendex and Inspec. These are electronic databases available to you at the GT Library's webpage. In addition, please take advantage of the numerous "hard copy" periodical indices such as Poole's Index to Periodical Literature (Reference AI3 .P7 1958) or Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature (Reference AI3 .R48)
- Available through GIL @ http://gil.gatech.edu
- Cassier's Magazine TA1 .E55
- Journal of the Association of Engineering Societies TA1 .A88
- Popular Science Monthly T1 .P78x
- Engineer (London) TA1 .E55
- Engineering TA1 .E55
- Engineering Record TA1 .E62
- Scientific American Supplement T1 .S52
- Available through other libraries. University of Georgia System--GIL Express/Interlibrary Loan-- or Emory University's Library
- Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly AP2 .A346 (Available at Georgia State or Kennesaw State)
- Cosmopolitan AP2 .C834 (Available at the University of Georgia, University of West Georgia, and Emory University, although at Emory it is AP2 .C79?)
- Collier's AP2 .C699 (Available at the University of Georgia and Emory's Microfilm Collection)
- Certain Issues of Good Housekeeping TX1 .G646 (Available at the University of Georgia and Emory Unversity, although at Emory it is AP2 .G66)
- Available through Project Guttenberg
- Various City Newspapers that could be of use (Some newspapers have searchable databases from the 19th century for free! Others, GT might have on microfilm)
- Google Patent Search-- Useful in finding original drawings, but also why the technology was invented and how its inventor envisioned its use.
- Frank Leslie's Historical Register of the United States Centennial Exposition, 1876. Available at the GT Archives only. T825 .B1 N6
- Some possible "secondary" materials/articles from eJournals (These artiles are written by contemporary scholars who are interested in the same "bigger questions" that our Virtual World's Fair Projects are interested in. Thus, while they mat not be presenting "primary material" to you, they may help you understand the broader implciations that technology had on the era. For example, Bill Brown's points about the Panama Canal or arial photography as representing a "new way of seeing" would be something you could find here. In addition, many of the articles in these periodicals are reviews of longer books. You may find in these periodicals a review of a book about the importance of the Eiffel Tower. All you need to do is go and check out that invaluable book!)
- Technology and Culture
- American Heritage of Invention and Technology
Book-length materials
(A number of these are available on our course reserve at the GT Library. You can use these both as primary and secondary sources)
Auerbach, Jeffrey A. The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display.
Brown, Bill. Material Unconcious: American Amusement, Steven Crane, and the Economies of Play.
Calhoun, Charles W, ed. The Gilded Age: Perspectives on the Origins of Modern America.
de Vries, Leonard. Victorian Inventions.
Dybwad, G.L., and Joy V. Bliss. Chicago Day at the World's Columbian Exposition: Illustrated with Candid Photographs.
Gibbs-Smith, C. H. The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Commemorative Album.
Herrin, Dean. America Transformed: Engineering and Technology in the Nineteenth Century.
Pease, Donald and Amy Kaplan. Cultures of United States Imperialism. (Especially essay by Bill Brown.)
Tichi, Cecelia. Shifting Gears.
Trachtenberg, Alan. The Incorporation of America.
van Dulken, Stephen. Inventing the 19th Century: 100 Inventions that Shaped the Victorian Age.
Due dates:
Groups will be presenting the final drafts of this project for grading on the final day of the semester, April 24.
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