technological evolution

 

The videos for this week started with a timeline showing the evolution of technology over the last ten million years and ended by discussing how technology and media may influence our future. The first video starts by showing us the first tool made by humans which tool made from stone, wood, antlers, and bones and ends in the year 2020 with the invention of quantum computers. Even though the video starts off with an invention from ten million years ago, most of the significant advancements have only then placed over the last two thousand years. I noticed that there were a lot more technological advancements after the invention of the printing press, and the time between advancements also started to shorten, this was because as reading became more accessible to the public and as a result more people could be educated.

The second and third videos are on the history of media literacy, and start by telling us that the term or field of media literacy only became a thing around the 1960s. The video also talked about Johannes Gutenberg the inventor of the printing press and gave the quote “as media became cheaper, more people had the means to become literate” this was evident in the first video as technology advanced. Something new I learned from the second video was about yellow journalism, yellow journalism is when a news company tries to sell you the story and not the facts, and it was called yellow journalism because to sell more newspapers Pulitzer and Hearst stroked tensions between the united stated and Spain in 1898, they did this because they were fighting over who would get to print a popular comic called the yellow kid.

 

The fourth video discussed what the future of jobs will be like in the future. The video starts by telling us how Covid-19 has impacted employment around the world and with automation improving and there being a global recession that people are losing their jobs at an accelerated pace compared to previous years. Since covid started this is visible in most communities I’d say most of us know someone who has lost their job or been made redundant due to covid and with Ireland having the longest lockdown in Europe a lot of small businesses, shops, restaurants, and pubs have had to close. The video says that these people will need to update 40% of their skills to adapt to the changing labour market, which companies and will fund as their human capital is their largest asset.