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Notes on video lecture:
The Four Information Ages
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on February 1, 2014 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
Sympathy, ruined, novels, perfect, concerns, memory, scholarship, priests, Mesopotamia, panacea, poetry, Bowdoin, factories, Greece, idiosyncrasies, China, pockets, loved, Dutch, social, anarchic
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four information ages
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1. invention of writing
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4000 BCE:                       
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cuneiform
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early writing used for commerce and             
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400 BCE: Golden Age of             
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Socrates thought writing              the dialogue process between people, since people aren't engaged with each other anymore
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fortunately Plato wrote everything down
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2. movable type
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9th and 10th century           
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15th century: Gutenberg printing press
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took control of printing from out of the hands of               , scholars, and the law
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made printers very important
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many printers were           
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English is a combination of German and French transcribing words to their Dutch hears, which created some of the                             
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3. mass printing
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19th century
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one might like to think that once people could get access to books that they would want serious books of                       
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mainly it was the novel that became popular
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novel gave a very different view of the social classes
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1789: Power of                 
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William Hill Brown, 23 year old
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first American novel
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about Perez Morton and James               , who were heroes in real life (Boston) but villains in the novel
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featured low and middle-class people
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people related to and            novels
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not everyone loved the third information age
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what will people think if they read stories about the experiences of people working in                   , or stories which indicate that the founding fathers may not be               
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women made internal                in dresses for them to carry novels
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they had to hide novels since they were thought by many since they:
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caused distraction
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ruined             
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depleted taste for elite literature
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made you susceptible to sexual predators
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filled you with                  ideas
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advice literature of the day warned parents against their children reading             
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4. Internet
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many of the                  we have in our current information age recapitulate the concerns of past information ages
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one major tension that each information age brings to society is the conflict between the beliefs that the new technology is both a source of destruction and a                for good
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technology is inherently             , it's driving force has always been to change human relations
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quotes:
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The role of education today is finding the right balance between preparing the next generation for their future, and teaching them the wisdom of our past.
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The greatest impact of new technology in every information age has always been social, the structure of human relations is never left unchanged.

Vocabulary:

Roman à clef, n. [rah-mohn-ah-CLAY] a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction, the key is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction, this key may be produced separately by the author, or implied through the use of epigraphs or other literary techniques ⇒ "The first American novel, "The Power of Sympathy" (1789) by William Hill Brown, was a Roman à clef which portrayed Perez Morton and James Bowdoin as villains under different names in the novel."
duodecimo, n. a size of paper, and the size of a popular kind of 19th century novel, so called because it is originally made by folding and cutting a single sheet from a printing press into 12 leaves ⇒ "Nineteenth century women would sew an extra piece of cloth on the inside of their dress which could conceal a duodecimo novel, allowing them to read it without others knowing."
cuneiform, n. one of the earliest known systems of writing, distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a stylus ⇒ "Dinger is a cuneiform sign, most commonly the determinative for "deity" although it has related meanings as well."

Spelling Corrections:

villian ⇒ villain

Flashcards:

who wrote what is considered to be the first American novel?
"The Power of Sympathy" (1789) by William Hill Brown
The Four Information Ages