This week’s first reading, the introduction of a book titled Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World by Mark Miodownik, changed the way I started to perceive materials used daily. The reading started off with the author explaining his past experience with a deep razor cut to his back by a stranger while taking a ride on the London tube train. He started to question why such a tiny piece of metal created such a large wound in his back. This one question changed the way the author perceived materials, from a spoon to a piece of aluminum, to the differences in wood. These thoughts led to many more questions and a career pursuit. People do not realize the importance of materials and the impact they have on our society. There is more than just science behind these materials, there is a function for human kind creating a civilized world. I found the introduction of this book to be very interesting from the start because the writer captivated his audience with his dangerous story but then kept the attention when he started to question something typically found uninteresting to society. It is crazy how materials like wood, steel, copper, aluminum, coal, etc. are a part of the daily life style, but shows the development of society and its impact on our history. Civilizations in the past did not have as much material as we do now and especially did not use money, but established themselves with the use of trading resources. Materials define a civilization.
The second reading, the introduction of another book, Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World by Patricia Crone also talked about the impact materials, location, and the interests of people have on a society. Crone talks about the social, political, and economic developments made to a society to flourish. Something that both Crone and Miodownik wrote about in their novels was the idea of a “closed book” and people only know as much as they are exposed to. If people do not know how to tell the difference between certain materials or know their history, how can there be any effort to change their future and learn from past mistakes? Many people take the world for granted and do not realize the importance of how silicon, aluminum, iron, glass, etc. make up a cellphone-something most people use many many times throughout the day. In the past, these materials were not something easily manufactured, let alone able to change into a technological device. It is so crazy to think about how people can look at a cell phone and know the exact year that that phone was popular and how it has developed into what it is known to be today. A society becomes civilized through its development of materials, providing success to the society.
Miodownik, Mark. Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World. New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014.
Crone, Patricia. Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World. London: Oneworld, 2015.
