Technology EOTO Reflection

After watching today's EOTO presentations, I learned a lot about how technology has shaped our society today and how we communicate with each other. I also learned a lot about how certain types of technology have shifted and grown to create other kinds of technology. 

One of my favorite presentations of the day was about the history of CDs. In this presentation, she talked about the history of CDs and how they have been fazed out of society in a way and that people today rarely use CDs as often as they did in the 1980s. 

I found it interesting from this presentation that no actual creator is credited with the invention of the CD because so many people and inventions played a part in its creation. This stuck out to me because it reminded me of the lightbulb and how Thomas Edison is technically credited with its creation, but so many other people played a role in it that it's not completely correct to give all of the credit to Edison. 

Another thing from this presentation that stuck out to me is that CDs impacted their own death, causing the MP3 to skyrocket, resulting in 20% of CD experiential losses since 2003. This was something that intrigued me because I didn't realize how much of a stepping stone CDs were for the next generation of technology following in their footsteps, Without CDs, the implementation of the MP3 and other similar technology after that wouldn't have been possible, and that's an incredible thing to think about. 

My second favorite presentation from the day focused on the creation of Facebook and its impact on society. From this presentation, I saw that Facebook was launched in 2004 by Harvard student, Marc Zuckerberg, for students on campus to connect with each other. Creating such a complex social media platform was possible for Zuckerberg as a result of his gift for coding which he used to his advantage. 

Zuckerberg's idea for Facebook was originally sparked by the first app he made called FaceMash. In this app, the faces of two female Harvard students would pop up on the screen, and other students would have to choose one based on which girl was more attractive. This didn't sit well with me because obviously, as a female, a site like this is very insulting and demeaning. 

Hearing this during the presentation, reminded me of a film I'd recently watched (on another technology platform that was presented during today's presentations, Netflix) and it talks about Zuckerber's rise to fame and how he created Facebook. More specifically, this movie focused a little bit on FaceMash and how it didn't go over well with the female students at Harvard because they felt like they were being targeted and attacked by this site. The movie is called The Social Network. Having seen this move before seeing this presentation helped me to understand more of what was being referenced and it made the presentation much more interesting. 

On the topic of movies, I also enjoyed the presentation about Netflix and the impact that it had. Netflix was originally founded by Reed Hasting and Marc Randolph (one of our innovators here at HPU! Which is pretty neat to think about). 

Furthermore, Netflix started off as a DVD service through a subscription where people could rent movies or shows and have the physical DVDs delivered to them to watch. This just shows how far Netflix has come and how much it has developed to become the mega streaming service that it is today. 

Some impressive statistics that I noted were: From 2002-2005, Netflix gained over 4.5 million members of subscriptions as it grew in popularity. Now, Netflix has grown even further and has over 3,600 movies and over 1,800 TV shows to choose from. 

Netflix has become such a broad platform that it's even been able to pave the way for other streaming services such as HBO Max, Hulu, Prime Video, and more.