My artifact that represents an aspect of my identity is the AM Radio. Even though there are many AM radios still in use today, they are being fazed out of mainstream use. The aspect of the AM radio that appeals to me is the sports coverage, and sports talk that are still broadcast for anyone who still chooses to listen. I breath, dream, think, and live sports. I always have and I always will. The AM radio remains my number one companion driving in the car, while Ipods, CDs, and HD radios are the modern car companions. The AM Radio may not be remembered as one of our most treasured artifacts from the past decades, but it was a central part of our culture, and should be remembered as one.
The only possible current social ties lie in the talk radio that goes on discussing our current political and future social issues. Even though this has it's place it has been mainstream replaced by the internet. Our volatile political news in this current age is kept up with on the internet on blogs, and news websites, no longer do people wait to here what is "current."
I feel that there would be very little interest in the field of Art History as well, as most of the first generation radios who received AM frequencies have likely already been salvaged and placed in museums across our material world. An example of this on a small scale is the museum that has a collection of AM (HAM) radios from the 1920’s through 1950’s at the included hyperlink.
Future anthropologists may dive deep into the social construction of the era where families sat around the radio after dinner to catch up on the “news” of the day. I feel that timeframe will be compared with our recent decade of sitting in front of desktop computers and laptops to receive all of our information, as well as when TV’s first replaced radio’s as the standard form of entertainment. As we can see from an article in Forbes these types of comparisons are already being made.
The only way that I can see the vernacular approach to material culture being a part of the AM radio in the future, would be for the continued collection of those radios that people have made on their own. These variation in these homemade radios will likely become more and more a sought after item.
As we grow older in this rapidly changing society more of the items that we seek now will one day become “artifacts” and many of our kids will look at an Ipod as a very useless primitive piece of equipment. That is the nature of our constantly changing material culture and everything will one day be an artifact, whether it is mankind analyzing the object, or some other life form.
2 comments:
I think you did a really good job in describing the nostalgic feelings that the AM radio gives to you personally. I just picked up a satellite radio in the past year, and even though the technology outputs nearly endless programming choices, it's easy to forget the origins of radio's "golden age", and I think you did well in picking up on its importance in society back in the early days of the medium.
I think this is a good topic. I agree with what you said about a lot of people no longer listening to AM radio. I listen to the radio in the morning to catch up on the news sports and politics but thats it. I also agree with you when you said the radio is being replaced by ipods and cds. A question that you could have asked is Why are kids resorting to ipods and cds? Is it because their tired of hearing about war and violence?
I think you did a really good job covering how the radio was a significant instrument in the families of past generations.
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