Impact of Pres. Ronald Reagan

Group:Kevin Oyama, Bo-Hsuen, Fumi

Our topic was on the presidency of Mr. Ronald Reagan, specifically during the years of 1980-1890. During the course of working on the project, the our group researched the major events that occur during this time period. We first found out how he appointed the first women to the Supreme Court, Mrs. Sandra Day O'Connor. To support this, we included a Stanford commencement program that featured her as the guest speaker. Second, we also discovered that Pres. Reagan was opposed to the Berlin Wall. To elaborate on this, we drove to a piece of the Berlin Wall located in California and took a picture to represent this idea. With this, we added small amounts of information such as specifics on what Pres. Reagan did during his presidency from old Newsweek magazines. Also we included scenes of political cartoons that depicted the major ideas that appeared during the time period. 

Much of our information was found through the help of the community. We found many documentation from neighbors. Also, we found other types of information though the internet as well as our groups garage. Local library were filled with an plethora of information and documentation that helped us very much.

If we were given a chance to pick a different topic, I would very much support that. The topic of Reagan was much too narrow to support during the project. There were too little concrete examples that represented Reagan. Other topics, such as technology and music, with broader topic would have been much more easier for us too elaborate and support on. It would have been better to actually do a little of the project early to see if the topic was worth working on.

If I were to give an advice, I would definitely tell them to be exact on the schedule. If you do not plan ahead on time. It becomes very difficult to find items later on. It is better to start earlier to grasp the magnitude of the work that must be put in the project. 

-Fumi K

Technology in the 1970s through the 80s

The progression of technological advancement has stunned many. Over the past ten years, technology has increased at an exponential rate. This appears to be the largest leap we have ever lunged. However, this technological revolution would not have occurred if the foundations had not been set up. The foundations are mostly left in the shadows despite the major role that they played in setting up our present. The aim of our project is to create a shadowless environment where the past is portrayed with equal importance to the present. As such, our theme was technology from the 1970s to the 1980s. We were designated to find technology in general that related to the 1970s and 1980s. We decided to focus on a subset of technological growth that was directly related to specific companies that have grown to be major corporations in the present. If their infancy, they were not well renown and didn't hold any spotlight in the news (unlike today). Some of the major corporations included Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Macintosh.

Our items follow a reoccurring pattern. We focused on the storage of memory. Starting from the old record player and transparent slides to the somewhat modern Audio CD. These particular items were chosen because they form a foundation that progressively leads to more sophisticated means of storage. Memory storage did not make spontaneous jumps, but built on top of each other. For example, the old record player which used visible groves to store data was later recreated as an audio cd. The premise was the same. However, the capabilities were vastly beyond it's predecessor. Another example was the cassette player and the floppy disc. From the cassette came the floppy disc. Though the floppy carried only marginal amounts of data, compared to the cassette player which only allowed for portable audio, the floppy was a leap.

One notable deficiency in our project was the lack of synchronization between the aesthetics and the information. A more refined layout would have been one of the important things to consider if given another chance to improve our current project. However, even more important would have been to gather a larger array of quotes which pertained directly to the items rather then addressing technology in general.

Future students aimed at this project should spend more time out of class setting up a layout and designing boxes. Setting up the boxes in one class period is simply not enough time to make a refined and elegant look. For our group, we had to return during lunch which was inconvenient to say the least. Perhaps setting up a box and bringing it to class for final adjustments rather then making preliminary adjustments at home and attempting to compress the designing in around 45 minutes as we did.