Silicon City and Civic Hall- Amy Yedid

This week’s trip to the “Silicon City” exhibit was really eye-opening for me, seeing the evolution of technology from the first computer that was invented to solve numerical problems, to computers of today’s day and age. Perhaps my favorite part of the exhibit was reading about IBM’s company motto, “THINK”. Without new ideas and thought, there would be no progression, no innovation. There must have been something really inspiring about that motto or perhaps it was the employees constantly seeing the word “think” everywhere because you can really see how their technology evolved over the years. There was a tremendous amount of technological innovation and I saw that as I made my way from the beginning of the exhibit to the end.

Speaking of tremendous technological innovation, it was amazing to hear about the work that Civic Hall is doing. As much of the techno-pessimist that I am, I must say that our visit to Civic Hall has really shed some light on the positive ways technology can be used and how it can people rather than harm them. I was incredibly intrigued by Melanie’s website/app, Benefit Kitchen, which allows users to put information to see what government benefits they are eligible for and even more so, tells them where they can go to get it. It’s extremely unfortunate how much money that was set aside by the government to help families in need goes unclaimed because families or individuals don’t know they are eligible for it or just don’t know where to go to get it. This one app makes the process so much simpler for these families. It’s technology like this that should get more recognition because up until Friday, I had never known about Civic Hall (besides for what we read and spoke about in class) or the Benefit Kitchen app, which leads me to believe that there are so many more people who don’t know about it but can stand to benefit from it or, if not, at least pass on the information to someone else who can. Civic Hall is an amazing company that deserves much more recognition for their work.