{"id":1535,"date":"2017-04-19T11:48:34","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T15:48:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/?p=1535"},"modified":"2017-04-19T11:48:34","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T15:48:34","slug":"burying-our-mistakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/2017\/04\/19\/burying-our-mistakes\/","title":{"rendered":"Burying Our Mistakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading about the landfill excavation that unearthed Atari video games made me think about other instances in history during which American companies \u201chid\u201d potential setbacks, mistakes, or failures. My mind immediately raced to the \u201cSyringe Tide<\/a>,\u201d an environmental disaster that occurred from 1987-1988 where significant amounts of medical waste, particularly hypodermic syringes were washed up onto the beaches in New Jersey, New York City, and Long Island. Hospitals decided to discard the medical waste in the ocean to avoid extra costs associated with the government regulations, figuring they could save money by burying their problem at sea. However, when the medical waste was found, hundreds of thousands of vacationers were driven away, causing places such as the Jersey Shore to lose much revenue in tourism as well widespread skepticism regarding public health in general. I also thought about the movie <\/span>Erin Brockovich<\/a>,<\/span><\/i> a dramatization of the story of Erin Brockovich, played by Julia Roberts, who fought in a real estate case against the energy corporation Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) which polluted a city\u2019s water supply with hexavalent chromium. It was not until Brockovich looked under the surface that she discovered how many residents in the area were poisoned by the toxic waste, leading her to succeed in one of the biggest class action lawsuits in American history. Although these examples differ in content and form, an examination of them led me to the conclusion that we bury our mistakes simply because we can, and yet, many of them are eventually uncovered.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Medicinal waste washed up on the Jersey Shore. View source here<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During Easter Break, I decided to watch the documentary entitled, <\/span>Atari: Game Over<\/a><\/span><\/i>\u00a0which explores the burial and excavation site in Alamogordo, New Mexico more in depth. The film brought light to many of the success of Atari, considering it to be \u201cthe future of technology.\u201d It also highlighted the idea that it has become \u201cfashionable\u201d to say that E.T. was the worst video game of all time, when in actuality, it was not, and was certainly not the sole reason for the company\u2019s downfall. Many people in the documentary reiterated the point that the E.T. game was not buried because of it was the worst game ever, rather it has become known as the worst game ever because it was buried. While society has become quick to \u201ctrash\u201d games and game designs both physically and verbally, hiding our mistakes from the public view has also become part of our history. After thinking about this more, was there a valid justification for the Atari burial site to be unearthed? If the site is looked at as being Atari\u2019s funeral, was it ethical to dig it up? Why does society feel the need to reclaim \u201cdead\u201d technology?<\/span><\/p>\n

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An image from the movie, Atari: Game Over. View source here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading about the landfill excavation that unearthed Atari video games made me think about other instances in history during which American companies \u201chid\u201d potential setbacks, mistakes, or failures. My mind immediately raced to the \u201cSyringe Tide,\u201d an environmental disaster that occurred from 1987-1988 where significant amounts of medical waste, particularly hypodermic syringes were washed up … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Burying Our Mistakes”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-b"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1535"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1538,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1535\/revisions\/1538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}