PORTAGE (WKZO-AM) –The Kalamazoo Air Zoo has just snipped the ribbon on a brand new exhibit that explores how pop culture has driven and led technology and how advancements in science and electronics have been sometimes correctly predicted and sometimes completely missed by the films television, music and science fiction of the last century.
But it’s a blending phenomenon because sometimes the technology has influenced pop culture, too.
It’s called “Popnology” and it’s nestled in among the historic aircraft on the main floor of the aviation museum. It tracks all the way from Jules Verne taking us back and forward in time to Jurassic Park, bringing back the things of times past using science — from the first robot in a film depicted by Fritz Lang, to Robbie the Robot, to R2D2 to the Terminator, showing how its resulted in several generations of industrial robots that are currently building cars and appliances in factories.
It tracks from Dick Tracy’s Wrist Radio to the Apple Watch. It follows handheld communications devices from the Army’s first walkie-talkies to the Star Trek Communicator to the flip phone to the smart phones of today.
It’s a learning experience for people of all ages. For the more mature, it’s a reminder of just how far we have come in one lifetime. For the young, it’s an introduction to how we got from living in a time when digital referred to what you did with your fingers, to all the technology they take for granted today.
Museum Director Troy Thrash said it’s part of their new mission to not just preserve aviation technology but to explore other forms of technology and turn children onto science, math and engineering too.
It will be at the Air Zoo on Portage Road in Portage through the summer until Oct. 2.
