Yesterday’s Weapons of the Future (1916), by Dani de Lucio

Weapons of the Future slidecast

5 Responses to "Yesterday’s Weapons of the Future (1916), by Dani de Lucio"

Jesse Greenfield says:

April 27, 2014 at 8:26 pm

I thought you picked a very interesting topic to do your presentation on. I really liked how you compared the weapons of WW1 to WW2 and showed that WW2 had a much bigger influence on weapons today. You did a good job showing the photos of the tanks and planes and comparing them. That being said I wish you went into more of the context of the invention. Why was it necessary for planes and tanks to be more armored? What effect did it have on warfare in general? I thought your narration was very good; you spoke slowly and clearly and it was easy for me to understand you and you didn’t try to pack a bunch of narration in 20 seconds. I would have liked you to speak about how the visions of the future in the past actually shaped the weapons we see today in the modern battlefield.

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Jacob Haase says:

April 28, 2014 at 12:11 am

One thing I liked about this slide cast was how you worked in material we have discussed in class. Your mentioning of Kranzberg’s laws was well integrated into the content of the presentation. Also, as Jesse said, your narration was very clear and concise. I appreciated your attempt to keep it short and sweet; however, perhaps a few slides could’ve benefitted from a little more narration. While it fit the 20×20 format, the presentation as a whole felt very staccato. That being said, the information you provided was relevant and well thought out.
Another thing that could be improved upon is your use of text slides. While it is totally acceptable to feature some of these, it is advisable that you use condensed bullet points rather than providing your script.
Your presentation was clear and informative but in the next slide cast project consider focusing more on your content rather than fitting the format. Well done.

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Marissa Liebman says:

April 28, 2014 at 2:18 am

Your topic selection on weaponry is really interesting. I especially found the slides with moving machine gun enabled trench destroying ferris wheels fascinating, especially because WWI was the last big trench war. WWII did foxholes, but the fighting powers really didn’t use trenches. The fire producing robot looks like a precursor to the iron man suit. Maybe the comics did a takeoff of the image? Like Jesse I would also like to have seen more on past visions shaping the modern battle field. For example: maybe a note on armored vehicles and planes damaging trench warfare’s effectiveness and how this further changed warfare today. We have a lot of interesting gadgets in the military now. As an additional note I liked the pictures you chose. It would have been nice to see more of them as opposed to wordy slides. You can always talk over the image you put down. You have a very clear voice in this presentation, please maintain that.

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Sean says:

April 28, 2014 at 3:59 am

This slidecast presentation did a good job of relating the chosen picture and comments to class concepts, with connections to the laws of Kranzberg and antihumanism. The speaker was clear and precise in her arguments and did not stray off topic. Ms. De Lucio mentioned antihumanism in warfare of today, and that the picture during World War I predicts this idea, or at least portrays it. The progression of World War I tanks and planes to those of World War II is notable, as was well documented in the slidecast. One can definitely see a clear difference in the technological development over the decades within the military context. Continual connections back to the original image were good, and kept every slide relevant. The ferris wheel looking war machine was very interesting and frightening. I have never seen anything like it – pictures or reality. The robot in the original image reminded me of the movie Pacific Rim, which features giant fighting robots. I thought the picture was interesting that the robot was pulling a tanks. Why can’t the tank drive itself? It struck me as funny that he robots mustache was shooting at the enemy. Cool topic and well done presentation. The only criticism I can think of is to fix the text box alignment on the title page so the words don’t overlap.

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Zack Benedetto says:

April 28, 2014 at 7:56 pm

I think this slidecast had some very interesting images of future weapons, as envisioned during the first and second world wars. The electric titan reminded me of terminator, a movie that first came out in the 1980s, yet people were envisioning weapons ike this since the first world war in the 1910s. The social context of these visions was clear how the weapon technology was relatively simple, so people had a lot to imagine and look forward too. I was surprised to hear that most of the imagining was done by civilians though.

Overall I think the slidecast was well organized, clear and easy to hear. However, it would have been nice to see and hear more about other futuristic weapons of the past, like the gyro electric destroyer, and the trench destroyer, and what their historical context was. I think replacing some of the text slides with more pictures would have been a little more effective. Very nice job though on a well thought out and easy to follow slidecast.

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