Progress, Progressives, Progressivism

The definition of progress, as defined by Dictionary.com is "growth and development", "continuous improvement" and "advancement in general". It can be applied in various forms to anything that can improve like the Progressive Era. The Progressive Era. This era in the United States was between "1890's to 1920's". Based on The Eleanor Roosevelt papers project, the era was deemed the Progressive Era because it was the broadest term that could be applied to the mass reform of social and economical processes going on. It also goes on the describe what was going on during this time. Progressivism was the broad term applied to the way people went about trying to fix the social and economical problems that abounded in the United States. People had begun to reject Social Darwinism as an excuse for problems such as poverty. racism, and class warfare. Much of these goals were achieved when Americans started to face their fears of immigrants and with the help of journalists like Jacob Riis and Ida Tarbel. These two journalists were leaders in helping to expose the corruption of corporate companies and through their writings many people were forced to think about "what democracy [actually] meant". One of the largest proponents for this reform was President Theodore Roosevelt. During his presidency he made sure to put federal regulations on large corporate companies to keep them from building trusts and not get out of hand in their dealings with workers.

In a quick analysis of what I've read, progressives pushed for large social reforms to help raise the living standard of everyone in the United States. It was like a large cleansing of the American mindset. Through outlets like newspapers and even the government people were shown the horrors of factory work, our terrible treatment of immigrants and the greed of the corporate world. With this information in mind and my research I will attempt to separate the goals into separate categories.

Essential Goals: Reformation of Federal Regulation on Corporate Conglomerates, Getting back to Democratic Republic roots of government, localized political parties more connected to public opinion.
Lifestyle Changes: Acceptance of Immigrants, erasure of racism and social Darwinism
After Thought Goals: "universal military service" (Encyclopedia Britannica), equalization of genders
Don't Try This EVER: Urge of "'enlightenment' rather than... political sovereignty" (Encyclopedia Britannica)

Prediction of the Future: True or False

Predictions in the future range from scary to realistic. Some of these predictions include Isaac Asimov's prediction of video-calling: "Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, including the weather stations in Antarctica." Today that would the equivalent of Skype on your phone or computer! Predictions like the automation of jobs like tailoring and haircuts still remain to be done by humans rather than machines as predicted by French artist Villemard. Most of the predictions made seemed to hopes and dreams for the generations to come, but writers of Utopian novels like Isaac Asimov dreamed up ideas that the overtaking of technology would be the demise of the population. Predictions that take away the jobs of the people are the least realistic because we as a society still need human contact, and technology is slowly taking that away. The most standard trend seen in these predictions is the steady rise and growth of technology and population size. None of the sources I have seen predict a decline or set back in humanity. 

To take my own view of predictions, I believe technology will advance to be so encompassing that we as humans will have created a robot companion that had artificial intelligence comparable to the of a human. Even so much so that the technology that is at our fingertips will be available in the blink of an eye, or a thought. The social skills and niceties of conversation will also be disappearing with the translation of words into pictures. 

Can we really predict the Future?

To say that the individual had control of the entirety of the future is an overstep and overreaching ideal. As a whole there is a leading system of government, research facilities that would be the flood gate holding back these ideas and would release them to their own benefit. There is a rare case where the creator is your average human that hasn't already been swept up by the higher-ups. In the eyes of the government, world or national it would be utter chaos if they did not control a majority of what goes on. The future is shaped by its leaders, and based on their personal motives any new technology could be a good or bad thing.

Post-Film: "Hawaiian: The Legend of Eddie Aikau"

The title of the documentary, Hawaiian: The Legend of Eddie Aikau was chosen in the mostly likely cause that Eddie imbued what it meant to be Hawaiian. Throughout the documentary Eddie Aikau's love for Hawaii, it's culture and people constantly shine through as major characteristics of himself. Eddied was the embodiment of being Hawaiian from his legendary surfing to his attempt on saving the his fellow crew members on the Hokulea. Eddie Aikau is a legend and guiding spirit on the island and in the ocean. With this in mind I believe the angle of the film was that Eddie was the embodiment of what it meant to be Hawaiian through his love for surfing and helping others.

Knowing that this documentary was created for ESPN's sports entertainment it would be hard to ignore the fact that the documentary had parts that would have been dramatized to elicit a response from the target sports audiences. The documentary would have also been focused around the surfing aspect of Eddie's life and not so much on personal and social life. Filmmakers would have mostly likely assumed the audience watching would have been surfers and understood most of the history behind the sport, they might not have needed to explicitly explain some parts of the movie, like the history behind the Hokulea. Had this movie been produced by a company like PBS or the History channel the documentary wouldn't have focused so much on the importance of the surfing competitions in Hawaii. The documentary also wouldn't have focused to much on Eddie as the main character but rather the view would have broadened to the Hawaiian population and how society changed through the fluctuation of American involvement.Surfing also wouldn't have been as big of a focus, the Hawaiian identity would have been more centered through more perspectives and other large figures in Hawaii's history.

Eddie Aikau the day the Hokule'a set sail

If I was to make a documentary based of the reading, I would have chosen to follow Theodore Roosevelt. My focus would be to follow his rise of power while in the Presidential seat and how he changed the US into a Global Leader. I would do this by highlighting his career and how he "inherited an empire-in-the-making" when he came into office. I would follow through with his expansion and development of the United States Empire, highlighting the fact that he served in the military and understood what it was like in war and understood how to use tactics of force. Only when necessary. The angle of my documentary would be through Roosevelt's love for america and how he wanted to help America be the best it could possibly be and be able to contend with foreign powers, and still retain American values.

Theodore Roosevelt: A Rough Rider

"How do you analyze a Political Cartoon?"

Before I opened the guide I had learned, in class, that an easy way to indentify the meaning of the cartoon was to look at the picture as whole and the details. By reading the words on the picture you could also figure out the two contrasting points that the cartoonist was trying to make. We understood that most cartoons point out the irony in a situation by using visual cues, and specific phrases. The guide that I opened on the Library of Congress pointed one more major theme to look for in the cartoons: the exaggeration of certain attributes like facial features or objects key to the meaning of the cartoon. Using the knowledge I had before the guide and new information from the guide I will look at political cartoons as a visual representation of literary elements like irony. It follow in steps like 1)observe cartoon as a whole 2) look at fine details (i.e. exaggeration, irony, etc.) 3)use prior knowledge and hypothesize what the meaning is and 4) finalize a theory on the meaning.

The picture shows the contrast between Cuba and the Philippines when America tried to civilize both countries and give independence to the. The Cubans are given independence (the pie) by the US because eventually they gave up and let the US take control and reorganize their country. The Filipinos on the other hand fought the Americans for a while before finally giving in. I came to this conclusion based on prior knowledge I had the contrast the cartoonist portrayed by exaggerating the different facial features of the two characters.

This image represent the bombardment the US recieved when they attempted to civilize the Filipinos. The man sitting to the side is the revolutionary leader Guinaldo who had gained a mass following from the population (the insects swarming Uncle Sam). This was fairly easy to deduce given the knowledge I had from reading the textbook on the Philippine war that America started. 

This image captures the aggression of the US Army to fight off Spain and take away the "Spanish Misrule" from Cuba. But American President McKinley is pulling back and portrayed as a coward to the situation. I deduced this from looking at the picture and seeing the obvious conflict over Cuba, between Spain(the vulture) and the US (Uncle Sam), but there was an internal conflict between Uncle Sam and President seen in McKinley pulling away from the war, against imperialism.

Phrenology

In our search for the Phrenology busts use and what it is we used google to find a scholarly article on the bust and its creator. The bust itself actually originated with Franz J. Gall in Germany in 1796 and eventually came to the United States. The Fowler brothers took this to the US and expanded it into a primitive nueroanatomy study. Our group found this knowledge by using terms in the scholarly article and google searching them. We also used knowledge that we had observed during our visit up to the bust. We would then discuss ideas about how people would have used this during the time period and how it was or wasn't related to science. My research proved to be better when I used key words and more specific ideas related to Phrenology or the Fowler's. The time period also depended on what physiologist you searched in combination with the terms.

After this exerscise we debated whether it was primary or secondary source. It could have been either, but in the context of our research it was secondary. If the time period had been set to when replicas were being made and its use to collectors it could have been a primary source. An important part to all of this was provenance. Provenance is origin, and the earliest known history about the object like the owner and where it was manufactured/created.