You may use any books and lecture notes, but DO NOT discuss issues with classmates. Allow yourself plenty of time to answer each question.

Read questions carefully, and answer all parts of questions you select.

Answer a total of two questions, one from each section below.

Exams are due no later than 5:00 p.m. May 12, in my MAILBOX in the main entrance of Pleasants Hall.

INSTRUCTIONS: 
Answer either the single question in Part I, or two of the questions in Part II (yes, you get two choose between answering only ONE, or TWO questions)

1. Read the attached article by Ronald Kessler about the invention of the transistor. Analyze the article as follows: (a) Douglas analyzes various parties' attempts to control the development of wireless/radio in terms of their success in "three interconnected arenas: technology, business strategy and the press" (p.xix, see also p.61 and 319). Apply this framework in comparing the successes/failures of Shockley with those of Bardeen and Brattain; (b) Compare and contrast Shockley with Marconi , Fessenden and De Forest in terms of personality, ethics and media savvy, citing both Douglas and Kessler to support your answers. (c) Kessler notes that in our society, we have developed "a cultural icon of the inventor as a solitary genius." Analyze the validity of this icon for modern invenyors, drawing on both Douglas and Kessler, as well as any other sources you would like, to support your answer.

1. One of Douglas' recurrent themes is the press' treatment of technologists as "heroes". (a) what were the qualities the press attributed to these heroes? (b) Present at least three examples of such heroes (give their names and what they did to be labeled heroes). (c) Douglas argues that by 1915 there had been a "major change" in the way the press covered wireless inventions. Explain this change.
2. Marvin tells us in her epilogue that "the past really does survive in the future" (p. 235). (a) Explain what this statement means with regard to the development of communication technologies, using examples from both Marvin and Douglas to support your answer. (b) Now suggest ways that modern communication technologies represent a real break from the past, supporting your answer with examples from texts, discussion and your historical and/or modern technology reports.
3. In chapter 5 of her book, the chapter on "Annihilating Space, Time and Difference," Marvin discusses a short story published in 1893, and comments dryly: "life in utopia, always the Caucasian standard" (p. 202). Douglas, in Chapter 8 of her book notes that "implicit in virtually all of the magazine articles written in the early 1920s about radio's promise was a set of basic, class-bound assumptions about who should be allowed to exert cultural authority in the ether" (p. 313). (a) Compare and contrast the sets of class-bound, ethnocentric and/or sexist views the two authors present as wrapped up in discussions of communication technologies in these two time periods. (b) Give an example of class-bound, ethnocentric and/or sexist assumptions that pervade discussions of modern day new communication technologies.

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