Social Media

 
Paper instructions:
Web sources may be used, but most sources should be from books.
A social history of a specific technological artifact. Here, you will provide the history of a particular technology, focusing on, among other things, the social factors that led to its invention, the social conditions that shaped its technological advancement or failure, how it was received by its target population, and so on. While traditional historical approaches focus on the “who, what, where, and when,” your socio-historical analysis will ask “why” and “how.” Topics might be on the social history of the bicycle, the light bulb, electric automobile, for instance. You can also look at specific topics in the areas of biotechnology (hybrid corn, human genome project, cloning, etc.) military technology (e.g. the atom bomb), use of nuclear power, computer, social media (the rise and future of Facebook, the demise of MySpace, etc.), and so on.
10 sources needed