Beeps and hums filled the Upper School Library classroom from Thursday, Feb. 13 to Tuesday, Feb. 18 at Poly’s first Yester Tech Expo. Sponsored by the Upper School Media Studies class, the exposition united 40 unique technologies, primarily from before the year 2000, and sourced from students, faculty and parents in the Poly community.

Objects on display included typewriters, rotary telephones, old television sets and a 16 millimeter film projector. Newspapers and magazines, including old issues of The Paw Print, were featured in the display, some chronicling notable events like the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the Iraq War.

“We didn’t have all this intricate technology back then, but we were still able to live without it,” noted freshman Anna Pisano, a student in the Media Studies class. “I think it’s important to show how society has changed.”

To prepare for the exposition, students in the Media Studies class researched the histories of the technologies that would be displayed and created videos of themselves as AI-generated avatars explaining what they had learned. The videos were played on iPads next to their respective technologies during the event, juxtaposing old technology with new.

“I hope that [students] think more carefully about the technologies that they use in their everyday lives,” said Upper School Film teacher Adam Feldmeth, who teaches the Media Studies class. “Any piece of technology that we are encountering is coming from past developments, past inventions, past steps in an ongoing process.”

Feldmeth hopes to host a second Yester Tech Expo in two years, the next time he will teach the biennial Media Studies class.