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Technology’s Stories v. 7, no. 2 – 10.15763/jou.ts.2019.06.13.02 PDF: Shorey_Making Core Memory In a two-minute clip from the docuseries Moon Machines, two women in white smocks pass a needle back and forth through a matrix of eyelet openings.[1] Sitting under task lamps in a Raytheon facility outside of Boston, they are making “core memory” for…
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Introduction The environmental legacy of the ancient Maya is a controversial topic. Since at least the 19th Century, when widely published travelogues began revealing the wondrous monuments of Maya cities to Euro-American audiences,[1] Western popular imagination has been captivated by Maya civilization, and especially tales of its demise. Collapse narratives frequently invoke primitive cultivation techniques,…
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On the morning of May 6, 2020, exactly one month after the announcement of the pandemic lockdown in a Southern district of Kerala in India, I was chatting with my friend Santhoskumar over a cup of black tea in the front yard of his newly located craft workshop.[1] While talking, he skimmed through his local…
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Today, artisans in the Panruti region of South India are known for their construction of musical instruments, especially, the thavil, a double-headed drum, played by striking one head using a hand and the other with a stick. (See figure 1.) It is played for festivals, weddings, and other ceremonies. Normally, artisanal knowledge in India such…
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“I will continue cultivation of pokkali while I can. This rice is natural and uses no chemical fertilizers. New generations might not take up this kind of arduous labor. There are changed ways of living now; in earlier times, cultivation was part of our lives; it was an integrated ecosystem, but now there are challenges…
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Technology’s Stories vol. 8, no. 3 – DOI: https://doi.org/10.15763/jou.ts.2021.01.05.02 Following World War II, snow was so valuable to Vermont tourism that a writer for Vermont Life called it “white gold.”[1] With snow, the author reasoned, people could ski. And when people skied, Vermonters profited. Today states throughout the country embrace this rationale. On October 12…
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Technology’s Stories vol 8, no. 3 – DOI: https://doi.org/10.15763/jou.ts.2021.01.05.03 Between 1922 and 1947 Barbra Bird regularly accompanied her husband, a forester, on trips to lumber camps in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York. They trekked into remote forests in the winter on snowshoes, making their way to piles of logs stacked on to skidways…
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