Shawn Huckins

The American Revolution Revolution: What would George post?

The brief history of The United States of America so far is bookended by revolution: political and technological. The American Revolution Revolution series explores 18th century American painting and portraiture in context of the 21st century lexicons - facebook status updates, tweets, texting acronyms - that permeate today's popular culture.

The American Revolution was conceived through an exchange of a few well-formed ideas communicated in person and by handwritten letters. Imagine what George & Co. could have done with the Internet.

Or not.

Technology influences how much we know and what we believe, as well as how quickly and intelligently we convey our ideas. But does how we communicate govern the value of what we communicate? The physical act of typing very fast on small devices has undeniably impacted spelling, grammar and punctuation, encouraging a degree of illiteracy that has become the new social norm. As goes our grammatical literacy, do our social and cultural literacies follow? What should we make of the fact that the political organization has 109,000 'likes' on Facebook while Justin Bieber has 6 million followers on Twitter?

Nearly infinite...