05 Jan Initial discussion posts

Week 5 discussion

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR DISCUSSIONS: Your contributions should be thoughtful and developed. Answer all parts of the question and use concepts from the course materials. Use a professional style of communication, with attention to grammar, spelling, and typos. Do not copy and paste information into discussions—write posts in your own words and cite all sources of information used. See the sample discussion post as a guideline.

Unless your instructor specifies otherwise, choose ONE of the following questions, and give a substantive response to at least two other students. A substantive response is not simply an agreement to your peer, but the response should add significance to the post and further the discussion.

To access the rubric for discussions, click on the discussion link for that week. The rubric is located towards the bottom of the discussion instructions.

Initial discussion posts are due by Thursday at 11:30PM ET and at least two responses to fellow classmates are expected by the end of the week on Sunday by 11:30PM ET.

How did the Industrial Revolution transform people’s daily lives? Be sure to include sanitation and labor.

How do Burke and Hare illustrate the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution?

The following quote from Jaques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence addresses the railroad. Discuss the impact of the railroad on daily lives or on the Industrial Revolution. In what ways did locomotion create a technological transformation for humanity as a whole – at least in the areas where it existed?

“At first, machinery affected only those who organized its use and the men and women who worked in factories. But by 1830 a different type of machine came into being that changed the life and the minds of all peoples. The memory of it is nearly gone, but it was the completest change in human experience since the nomadic tribes became rooted in one spot to grow grain and raise cattle; it was in effect a reversal of that settling down. Locomotion by the force of steam, the railroad, uprooted mankind and made of it individual nomads again.” (Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 539)