Currently Under Revisions

-
Edit 3/3/2020
This post is currently being revised...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The History of the Printing Press

-
Image
Print considered a dying medium in today's tech-dominated world. It's ironically considered how one of the most important inventions in human history is going out of style. 600 years ago in Europe, an emerging literate middle class was calling for more books being produced. However, in 1000 years the process of creating a book hadn't changed. A single book would often take up a year, and most of the books being printed were done by monks by hand. These books were privately commissioned due to being high in price, but often beautifully illustrated text and images.  The middle class could not afford to pay these prices nor did they have the time to wait. Block books were another popular choice, a sheet of wood would have cut out letters which then would be inked and pressed onto a piece of paper. This was less expensive but very time-consuming.  A new way of printing had to be invented, one German man was genius enough to find that new invention. Johann Gutenberg was a ...
Read more

The History of the Emoticon

-
Image
Emojis, we use them daily to communicate from texts, emails, and social media posts. These colorful icons, though, have a far more humble a simple beginning as emoticons. Emoticons got their name from emotional icons and were invented on September 19, 1982. At Carnegie Mellon Univeristy Computer Science professor Dr. Scott Fahlman saw a problem in the newly emerging computer forum landscape. Establishing the tone of posts, especially on forums, hadn't yet been mastered. Dr. Fahlman suggested that people use a smiley face :-) to mark joke posts and a frowny face :-( to mark serious posts. Fahlman students like the idea and used it in their emails, which spread to other universities, which led to more people using them online. Today the school still celebrates the invention of the smiley face with cookie they hand out every September 19th. Students felt that it was a great way to address emotions and tone in the computer landscape. It would allow them to express quickly and c...
Read more

Spiral of Silence

-
Image
Have you ever been apart of a team or group when suddenly a question is raised and the others quickly make their opinions known? Before you can answer you find that the rest of your team have already agreed on one idea/opinion. Even if it's not something you fully agree with you decide to stay silent as to not rock the boat? Or have you ever been the odd person out because you decided to share your opinion? There's a theory on that: The Spiral of Silence. What is the Spiral of Silence? The spiral of silence is a theory regarding people's willingness to express their opinions on public controversial issues. Often these opinions are affected by the unconscious perception of that opinion being popular or unpopular. When the opinion is unpopular, people will often keep from openly expressing their opinion.  However when an opinion is popular people will be eager to express it. Where did the Spiral come from? In 1965 communication researcher Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann an...
Read more