The Effects Political and Technological Change Have on One Another

It was the year 2008. Exactly 833 days prior to the writing of this essay, Barack Obama was elected to be the 44th president of the United States of America. The road that lay ahead of this relatively young, but undoubtedly brilliant politician was laden with pot-holes, cracks, and unpaved areas. He faced the repercussions of an economic meltdown, two foreign wars against an unidentifiable enemy, and dismal education system. It can be said that political change was eminent, with the several new faces on Capital Hill and a resounding cry of ‘Hope’ among the nations’ voters. But at the same time, it could also be said that technologic landscape was changing as well. Social media, cell phones, cable television, and the internet would have been words of tomfoolery to anyone before the 1990’s. And yet, only 2 decades later all of the items listed above play a major role in the domestic and international political landscape. Never before this time period would you have seen so many voters influenced by presidential candidates’ appearances on ‘Saturday Night Live’, or a mass riot in Egypt organized by Twitter. The examples of change during our current time period and several others from the past have lead me to believe that neither political or technological change are ever more important than the other, but instead each have a direct influence on one another that drives change to occur in general.
The middle of the 20th century has been marked as a time of great triumph for the United States. The country was finally being recognized as a modern day heavyweight on the international scene. Emerging relatively healthy from the Great Depression as well as two World Wars, it seemed that their was truly one worry on the minds of the American Citizens: The Rise of Communism. The tensions between the US and Eastern Europe and Asia were consistently on the rise. Our leaders did everything they could to warn their people about the dangers of that type of government and how the... [continues]

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