Theses and Dissertations at Montana State University (MSU)
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Item A turbulent upriver flow: steamboat narratives of nature, technology, and humans in Montana Territory(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2019) Kelly, Evan Graham; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mark FiegeFor a 25 year period in the second half of the 19th century, steamboat travel was a critically important transportation technology which influenced the material, social, and cultural existence of people and landscapes in the Montana region. Building on methodological approaches developed in New Western History and Environmental History, this study argues that steamboats in Montana played a significant role in shaping cultural, demographic, and environmental changes in the area. Steamboats and their crews shaped the dynamic exchange of cultures, materials, and energy between people, landscapes, and technologies. This project stresses that the changes in human-environment relationships in the region influenced people in different ways depending on their race, class, gender, and ethnicity. This thesis argues that steamboats and their crews tapped-into and altered existing systems of material and energy exchange, reshaping energy regimes and augmenting environmental realities in the region. At the same time, steamboats influenced human actions and perceptions of the world around them. The layout of this project begins with an introduction chapter articulating methodological approaches and frameworks used in this analysis. The second chapter provides background on the changing natural and human geographies of the region, while the third chapter provides a history of steamboat technology as well as an overview of the labor, materials, and auxiliary technologies required to operate steamboats. Chapters four through seven present four chronologically organized case-studies and these narratives are used as lenses through which the broader implications of steamboat transportation in the region are examined. The final chapter briefly examines the steamboat Montana and the decline of steamboat travel in the early 1880s before offering a summary and conclusion of findings.Item Dying to communicate : the unabomber's determinism(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2016) MacLean, Mary Elizabeth; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Brett WalkerModern communication technology is changing how humans relate in response time, tone, written language, and imagery with resulting life changing acts in individual and public life. Many modern people have been all too willing to accept that technological innovation is a good choice for the future. In this thesis, social and technological history of Medieval through post-Industrial Revolution communications are analyzed drawing in part on Theodore Kaczynski's theory on the effects of technology to our bodies, psyches, and the environment. Kaczynski's theoretical frame suggests that computing technology has changed how we write, what our response times and the tone of our writing is, and what words look like in the last quarter century. The spoken word promoted with the advent of moveable type helped promote literacy among the masses. Computer technology then again changed printing and expectations around writing. Humans have gone from verbal, to printed words, to using images to communicate. As the look of words migrated to the symbolic, the ease of message delivery and the introspection of composing thought is shortened, words are written that often would not be spoken to the reader, and people no matter their age are touched by this technology. This thesis uses Ted Kaczynski's, (also known as the Unabomber) ideas to challenge the core of our views of these modern devices and the choices we make to adopt or reject them. Whether the choices we make are an expression of freedom or of necessity we must become more aware of how technology changes the way we live, work, and respond to these instruments as models of choice. Historical perspective helps us to analyze whether we are chewing up time or getting beyond unabashed acceptance of technology in the twentieth century.