The 1893 World’s Fair was an impressive achievement both in showing people new technology and different cultures. It showed off various countries’ cultures and how they viewed technology of the time. It showed important aspects the American culture and how they thought. The city was built in two years and only to be temporary. I think this important because of how our society views technology now. Today we are focused on consumerism and in order for it to work people have to keep buying new technology. Companies try to make new technology that lasts only long enough so that the consumer doesn’t lose faith in the company and will buy the newest and greatest piece of their technology. In class we talked about how a company can put out software updates that makes a phone or computer run slows and make it feel like the technology isn’t working well anymore when in reality it would be working fine without the software updates.
Even if the technology we own is working fine we tend to want the newest piece of technology on the market. When a new version of a smartphone comes out every couple of years there are a lot of people who will get the new version even if their current phone is working perfectly fine. This is part of the consumeristic nature of our society. I think we subconsciously judge those with old technology because they haven’t been contributing to the economy in the traditional consumer ways.
Society has difficulty keeping up with the constantly changing technology which can be both a good and bad thing. As we talked about previously technology can change the way we interact with the world around us. It changes how we communicate with other people and how we gather information.