Blog Post #8 What I learned from EOTO #1

During our Each One Teach One presentations, I learned many things about the media technologies. So many of my classmates had great presentations that taught me a lot about the history of the media that we use very day. One presentation that specifically caught my eye was the one about the history of emoji's. 

I was surprised when Ben presented his title because his topic was so different than the rest of us. I didn't see the relevance to emojis and the impact they have had on the way we communicate until after his presentation.  Ben started off by telling us that emojis have actually been used since the 1800's. The first emoji was actually used be Abraham Lincoln as he used ";)" in one of his speeches. Shocking right? since then emojis have grown tremendously and have become apart of everybody's everyday use with communicating. Emojis express how we are feeling when it is hard to interpret with using just text and words, or they simply just replace the words itself. My mother for example, really only communicates using emojis.  If I ask her how were day was she simply sends a 'thumbs up' which to me reads, 'it was a good day for her.' 

Additionally, another presentation I found profoundly interesting was the invention of the radio. I did not realize before how the radio completely changed the speed of communication. The first wireless communication led to the development of many other inventions that used radio waves, like the television, mobile phones, and satellite communication. Without the radio, news would take extra days and weeks to reach to reach the general public, and when that happened, most news was irrelevant by then. Music and entertainment also became revolutionized during this period. Before people had to use records and live music for their joy, now you could listen to music whenever you wanted, even during traveling. 

I was also fascinated by the creation of paper. It is definitely another overlooked type of media similar to the emoji, but this is actually something that would be very difficult to live without. Before paper, it was very difficult to store and share information. Or even, create information. Everything had to be done basically be word of mouth. When paper was created and mass-produced. We then saw the pencil, pen, type writer, ect., then come to life. Making our lives much easier.  

Overall, learning about these three technologies was very beneficial to me considering I did not know any facts or information about them before. They are all things we use everyday without thinking, but without them, I am not sure what life would even look like for me. I definitely appreciate these things much more now after learning the history of them and how they have impacted the world.