Podcast Series: 	Control, Alt, Innovate: Perspectives on Technological Advancements
Podcast Title: Moving, Growing, Healing: How Technology Has Changed Fields of Daily Life
Producers: Krishna Jaswal (Class of 2027) and Lynn Lee (Class of 2026)
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Krishna Jaswal, Lynn Lee, Narrators 

In the past few years, society has seen an incredible rise in artificial intelligence technology - a development that has forced almost all fields to adapt while sparking global debate about the role of artificial intelligence in our lives. In late 2022, Open AI released ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence tool that, as of August 2025, hit a benchmark of 700 million weekly users. As astutely noted by Stanford University’s 2025 Artificial Intelligence Index Report, “AI is rapidly moving from the lab to daily life.”

However, artificial intelligence is just the latest technological change that has led society to readjust our ways of living. In the past century, changes in telecommunications, media forms, transportation, agriculture, computing, and health technology have redefined our systems and habits. In this podcast series, Control, Alt, Innovate: Perspectives on Technological Advancements, this Uni High Oral History Project sets out to understand how the rise of new technologies have impacted our lives over the past century.

From Uni High, I’m Krishna Jaswal, a member of the Class of 2027 and I’m Lynn Lee, a member of the Class of 2026. 

This episode in our series Moving, Growing, Healing: How Technology Has Changed Fields of Daily Life tells the story of how advancements in transportation, agriculture, and medical technology impacted Central Illinoisans. 

From the introduction of seat belts in automobiles to the masses popularizing air travel, technological developments over the past century have pushed the transportation field to innovate and integrate itself into people’s lives. 

The U.S. Census reports in recent data that 91.7% of U.S. households have a car. Today’s automobiles look vastly different from the first automobile, the Benz Patent Motorwagen, created in 1886 by German mechanical engineer, Karl Benz. His invention featured three wheels and was the first car powered by gasoline. Over the years, cars have become more important for day to day life and have gone through tremendous physical changes. According to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation, personal cars are the transportation of choice for Americans commuting to work today.

Paula Kaufman, who worked at the University of Illinois as the Dean of Libraries and the University Librarian until she retired in 2013, recalls her memories of her family’s car growing up in the 1950s.
 
Paula Kaufman
Cars, they were big cars. They were very big and they had fins in the back and they were really ugly. They were two-tone. So, our Desoto, which was really a precursor of the fins. It was a 1956 model and it had small fins. It was white with green-dark green on the fins, it was very classy. Fins got much bigger in 1957. They’re really awful looking. And, we didn’t have backup mirrors or side mirror blind spot indicators or any of that stuff. In fact, we only had one side mirror. You only had a driver's side mirror.  

Krishna Jaswal, Narrator
Cars also lacked many safety features in the mid-20th century that are now common today. For example, there were no seatbelts until a 1968 government mandate, or airbags – first required in 1998.

Paula Kaufman
No seatbelts, there were really no restrictions on how many people you could have. In fact, my uncle also had a pickup truck for his business. My mother’s family was in the mattress making business. And we used to ride in the back without any kind of restraints as well. There were no booster seats, there were no airbags, and there were no seatbelts.

Krishna Jaswal, Narrator
Central Illinois farmer Dennis Wenger recalls his memories of people wanting more safety measures in cars. 

Dennis Wenger
The vehicles weren’t structured to protect you in a crash as well. And, safety was a public concern because if you get in a wreck and you’re in the hospital, and you didn’t have insurance, then the public’s gonna pay for fixin’ you up. We all had a concern to make vehicles as safe as possible. It wasn’t easy for them to get seat belts or lap belts in- to redesign the seat belts and everything, so there’s a lot of people who balked at that- said, “there’s too much control.” But, I think that overall it’s proven that we have considered making it safer.

Krishna Jaswal, Narrator
Alongside cars, air travel has also changed tremendously in the past century. According to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, 1955 was the first year more people in the United States traveled by air than by train. Urbana resident Margaret Lovell recalls her first flight experience which took place on a propeller plane compared to today’s passenger jets. 

Margaret Lovell
The first planes that I flew in were prop planes, propeller planes, and even if they were very very long distance, so it’s like I flew from Washington DC to San Juan, Puerto Rico in a prop plane. So they could go long distances. And they were very very noisy. So, underneath the wing, or usually underneath the wing, is this big circular tube. And all of the propulsion is happening inside, you’re not seeing anything. A propeller driven plane has the props, the propellers, sticking off the wings, usually out the front in one way or another out the front of the plane. Single engines have it right out the nose. And it’s actually a propeller which spins in the air and generates the lift and causes the plane to rise or fall. 

Krishna Jaswal, Narrator
Lovell recalls the change to passenger jets.

Margaret Lovell
So then the jets, which came around I probably flew in a jet the first time when I was maybe thirteen - quieter, faster, smoother and cool. But here are some other differences, we used to be able to walk out on the runway and climb the stairs and get on the plane, with nobody checking us for anything, never had to take your shoes off, never had anyone look in your bag. And you could just go to the airport and buy a ticket. You didn't have to plan ahead. So you could just, “Oh, I want to fly to Pittsburgh today.” So you would just go to the airport say, “I’d like a ticket to Pittsburgh today.” And they would sell you a ticket, they would take your bag and check it – it was checked bags – and then you just literally walk out onto the runway. They didn’t have any walkways or anything like that. You would just go and get on the plane.

Krishna Jaswal, Narrator
In the past, when air travel was a novelty, the culture of air travel was much more formal than the budget airlines of today. Champaign-Urbana residents Maria Goncalo, Grant Henry, and Cope Cumpston share memories of flying in the 1950s and 60s.

Maria Goncalo
At the time people used to dress up to fly. It's not the casual way.You had to dress up. Women wore dresses, and men wore suits, and it was very formal. They used to feed you meals no matter how short or long the flight was.

Grant Henry
You’d wear a suit and a tie. You go to an airport nowadays it's you flying out of here nothing like that. Nothing like that!

Cope Cumpston
Flying today is awful. It is just the pits. Flying used to be really fun and a big adventure and airports were elegant places where people were courteous and you weren’t shoveled around like cattle in lines. The seats were very comfortable, you always got meals, you always got drinks. It was considered very elegant travel.

Krishna Jaswal, Narrator
Technology has advanced the field of transportation, making it safer, more efficient, and more accessible. 

Just like transportation, agriculture has seen revolutionary advancements in the field within the last century, advancements led by technology. Following World War II, America went through an agricultural revolution, which saw the rise of science and technology implemented into the agriculture industry with the hope of boosting efficiency and lowering the cost of production. 

Champaign-Urbana resident, Ann Reisner, grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin during the peak of the revolution and witnessed firsthand the transition from traditional farming methods to modern technology. Just a few years before her birth, her father acquired one of the most significant innovations of the time: the tractor.

Ann Reisner
My dad made the switch. And, it was probably in, 1949. And at the time they made the switch, they never thought that horses would be replaced by tractors. They thought there would always be horses on the farm to do some odd jobs.

Krishna Jaswal, Narrator
Tractors allowed farmers to plow, plant, and harvest larger areas of land in less time, significantly increasing productivity and reducing physical labor. Reisner shares the game-changing nature of adopting tractor technology.  

Ann Reisner
Reliable labor. Faster. More efficient. At the time that we were introducing them, gas and oil was incredibly cheap. So, it was a very, acre by acre and bushel by bushel, it was a cheaper way to go. And, having the control was not insignificant, because that meant you could harvest on days where it was sunny. Whereas, when we were going around from farm to farm to farm, there’d be about ten farms or so, you had to, one, wait your turn. Then, wait your turn when it was sunny. So, you could lose crops that way. 

Krishna Jaswal, Narrator
Before tractors and other machinery, domestic animals were used to accommodate the tough labor. Horses and oxen, commonly used on farms, provided much-needed help for hauling equipment, plowing fields, and transporting produce. However, injuries and stress from handling such strong animals created significant challenges. Dennis Wenger, a farmer from Fairbury, Illinois, who now works on the same farm where he grew up, comments on the dangers that came with using animals for labor. 

Dennis Wenger
It probably started with the horses — that was a danger just in itself. The horses could be attached to an implement that had a moving part, and if you were out trying to adjust something or work on, if the horse decided to just take a few steps, it would activate the movement of the machine.

Krishna Jaswal, Narrator
Technological improvements in modern agriculture contributed significantly to making farming labor more comfortable and safer. 

Dennis Wenger
When I grew up, of course there were no cabs on the farm tractor and the equipment. The first cab that I was in — it was about ‘68 or ‘70, we got a cab on a tractor, and of course it made it more comfortable. It was safer. You were enclosed from the weather, was the biggest help, especially cold weather. 

There’s been a lot of electronic equipment installed in the machinery to make it more safe. They’ve continued to add protective shields from live operating belts and chains. As far as we’ve got electronics: most all the equipment tractors and combines that you sit in, the seat you sit in has a safety switch. When the machine is in the operating mode with the chains and belts turning, or other devices, and when you raise up out of the seat within a few seconds, the operation of the machine stops. So, that’s the biggest help, far as preventing you from going and getting your hands or something into a moving part. Agriculture still is one of the leading lists of injuries and deaths in the work industry.

Krishna Jaswal, Narrator
In addition to safety features, some of the most remarkable advances in crop production have been possible through the use of computers. John Dudley, a Professor Emeritus in Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois, grew up on a farm in rural eastern Indiana and later spent his career as an academic focused on agriculture. After receiving his PhD in plant breeding and genetics from Iowa State University, he worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Colorado on sugar beets and then went to North Carolina to work on alfalfa. After that, he returned to the Midwest to work on the genetics of corn. He explains how modern technology has enabled him to process and analyze large amounts of data efficiently.

John Dudley
There are lots of important advancements in agricultural technology. Well, you can divide them up; there were advances in technology for improving plants by breeding and those had a major effect because, well, simple example, hybrid corn fields in Illinois were probably around 40 or 50 bushels per acre up until a couple major advancements and now, we’re up to 300 bushels per acre. That's 6 times as much corn from an acre grown as there was back when I started the business. And it’s not my fault that we got there, but, it’s just part of the fact that corn breeding, a lot of technology advances. One of the major ones is computing power. We have so much computing power now that we didn’t have back when I started.

… Well, it meant that I could do a lot more in terms of calculations and for my research; that was a big deal because we dealt with a lot of numbers. And that, and it made it a lot easier for me to communicate with people.

Krishna Jaswal, Narrator
Dudley’s career in plant breeding and genetics has given him a unique perspective on how technology has transformed agriculture. The impact of technology, however, extends beyond the lab and into the fields themselves, where modern machinery has changed the way farmers work. 

John Dudley  
The GPS on the farm is a big deal now, because you go to the edge of the field, you put in the exact location where you’re located, and you pull your tractor up with a 12 row, or 24 row, or 36 row planter and basically, you get in the cab and turn it loose, and it goes to the end of the field, and you turn around, and head it back and it takes over and drives you to the other end of the field. Well, farmers, they’re sitting in an air conditioned cab, with a television set, probably, and with a bunch of monitors. And I remember as a kid, I was driving a tractor sitting on a metal seat with no umbrella out in the sun. You know? So there have been huge changes for the better.

Krishna Jaswal, Narrator
As technology continues to reshape agriculture, artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly prevalent in modern farming. Dennis Wenger explains how advanced technologies are already being used in the field and offers a glimpse into the future of farming.  

Dennis Wenger
A lot of the systems on the machinery and stuff are monitored already. There's input in there for the parameters of your common crop, and it’s telling you the moisture of the crop, and it’s recommending you to slow down or to speed up. We do have now offered driverless auger carts to unload our combine. So it can be a conventional tractor picked in the field with the city in the field. With the technology, you can tell it to come to the combine. It knows how to take a path through the field that won't run through the standing crop. It'll come to the combine and allow you to unload the grain on the go, and then it'll go back to a base station all on its own. But it’s got parameters set up.

Krishna Jaswal, Narrator
While AI offers exciting tools to improve efficiency and decision-making, it also raises important questions about how much control should be handed over to technology. 

Dennis Wenger
AI — and I’m not an expert on AI — I do understand the basics of it. AI to a farmer — he's always looking for a new tool, a better tool, and I think in most cases we have to look at that as a tool. The AI, the limitations of it, you hate to say you're going to limit the ability to use a tool.  But it's still gonna take a human being to be involved with the input into the AI product. And it's gonna have to be monitored, and it's gonna have to take a group of people, there's no one person or small group of people that can make decisions on that. But if we just really try to use it as a tool but not let it control us, and then figure out how to make sure that we monitor it, and keep limitations on it.

Krishna Jaswal, Narrator
Not all changes are purely technical, with social factors playing significant roles within the agricultural industry. While the benefits were significant, they also came with the decline of small family farms to industrial powers. In the past, farming relied on teamwork and support, with communities coming together for larger tasks like planting and harvesting. But with the rise of modern technology, it is easier to complete tasks individually, and there is not a constant need for peer support, changing the social side of rural life. Ann Reisner reflects on the social dynamics of farming before and after the rise of advanced machinery. 

Ann Reisner
The thing I remember as a real youngin’ was threshing parties. Now these were when ten or twelve men and their sons would get together and go from farm to farm, and thresh the hay, or the oats, it was usually oats. And, that was a big deal! And, it was neat! We’d have all the neighbors get together, and the house that people were threshing in was the one that provided all the food so you’d have this big eating thing in the middle of the day. You learned really how to get along with people. We finally went to a combine, to do it, and that would have been maybe, 1960. My dad definitely preferred to have the combine, which he could control. We lost a lot of socialization, face to face.

Krishna Jaswal, Narrator
Agricultural technology has transformed farming, making it safer, more efficient, and more sustainable. These advancements have revolutionized productivity, improving lives across the industry. Farming has also become safer, reducing physical risks farmers have to take.

Lynn Lee, Narrator
Just like agriculture has been dramatically transformed by technology, so has the healthcare field. From the first X-ray in 1895 to the first M-R-I in 1977, these new inventions have completely changed how we find and treat health problems. Medical imaging has become more accurate and has given doctors a chance to get a better look inside the body. This technology continues to push the boundaries of what medicine can achieve. 

Keith Kelley, Professor Emeritus of Immuno-physiology at the University of Illinois recalls one breakthrough in his lifetime - the discovery of cytokines, small proteins that help cells communicate within the immune system. Their identification transformed how scientists understand and treat diseases. 

Keith Kelley
We have technology today that could just be imagined 20 years ago. For example, a little bit of science. There are proteins in the blood called cytokines, these are made by many cells, but mostly by cells in the immune system. And, it wasn’t until 1976, 77, that the very first cytokine called interleukin 1, intercommunication between leukocytes was discovered. All of us were doing biomedical research at that time, in 1976 through 1990. Today, there are 37 of those cytokines that are known. And to think how we did research in the 1980s without knowing about the existence of these 37 molecules was just incomprehensible. And then of course with DNA sequencing technology we have access to many many proteins and compounds that we couldn't even imagine 30 years ago.

Lynn Lee, Narrator
Also in Kelley’s lifetime, medical tests have become more efficient. 

Keith Kelley
In terms of the physical exam it’s the same. What’s changed is the technology for tests. All kinds of blood tests. In terms of what they can do with your blood sample or urine sample, it’s much, much, much greater and better. And I can give you an example, I had a blood test - 2 days ago. About 8 tests were run, and within 10 minutes I got what’s called a CBC - a cell blood count - I got it back in about 30 minutes. And, I have all results of all 8 of those tests back within 24 hours.

Lynn Lee, Narrator 

Similar to Kelley, Champaign resident Maria Goncalo shares how fast getting test results back has gotten in recent years. 

Maria Goncalo
A while back I was having heartbeat problems. Before you had to make an appointment to have a machine check your heart, and now they have it right there. At Carle, they hook you up and the test results are right there, and it’s amazing how they can tell you right away whether there’s a problem or not. 

Lynn Lee, Narrator 
Wearable technology, such as the Apple watch which debuted in 2015, have also become a standard part of personal health care. These devices track vital signs. Goncalo shares how she relies on her Apple Watch for continuous health monitoring.

Maria Goncalo
Medically, it keeps track of my heartbeat, it keeps track of whether or not there are any abnormalities in my heartbeat. It wakes me up if something is wrong. If my heartbeat goes lower than normal- it wakes me up. If I fall, it calls 911.

Lynn Lee, Narrator 
In addition to advancements in diagnostics and wearable technology, Kelley, born in 1947, recalls changes in how labor delivery protocols have changed during his lifetime. In the United States, it wasn’t until the late 1960s and early 1970s that hospitals began allowing fathers to be present for childbirth, creating a more inclusive birthing  experience. 

Keith Kelley
I remember when my siblings were born, my father certainly could not be in the delivery room. And, could only be there, I don’t know, a few hours after the child was born. And the siblings, like me, we couldn’t even go to the hospital to get into the room to see our new sibling. And that’s to be contrasted with today, when our daughter was born at Carle, I was in the delivery room the whole time. And, that was really gratifying to see our daughter born.

Lynn Lee, Narrator 
Innovations in the medical field have transformed healthcare, expanding possibilities for diagnosing and managing diseases. Urbana resident Cope Cumpston recalls a life changing surgery she underwent in her youth.  

Cope Cumpston
I had scoliosis as a teenager, and I had a spinal fusion, and that changed my life. I would’ve gotten hunched over. I would’ve been crippled. And so that made a huge difference. 

Lynn Lee, Narrator 
Another advancement during the lifetime of interviewees has been vaccine availability. John Dudley, Professor Emeritus in Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois, reflects on two important vaccines developed in his lifetime - the polio vaccine created in 1955 by Jonas Salk aimed at eradicating polio, and the Covid-19 vaccine, created in record-time in 2020 during a global pandemic. 

John Dudley
Oh, there are all sorts of vaccines. I mean all the vaccines for young kids now were developed then. The one that strikes me was the vaccine for polio because there were two vaccines developed and one of them was tried and there was a problem with it, but it took years to develop a vaccine. And the remarkable thing about the COVID vaccine was how quickly scientists were able to develop a vaccine and get it distributed. 

Lynn Lee, Narrator 
Breakthroughs that seemed impossible in previous generations have led to treatments for life-threatening conditions. Cumpston shares her perspective on how medical technology has transformed many lives.

Cope Cumpston
We treat a lot of things that were not even understood just a few generations ago. The medicine that saves people with serious diseases, impacts me tremendously cause friends who’ve come through cancer, friends who’ve come through Covid, friends who’ve come through HIV. People surviving, you know, babies surviving that would not have without the technology that there is in medicine now.

Lynn Lee, Narrator 
As these technologies advance, artificial intelligence is also making its way into healthcare. AI has shown promise, particularly in diagnosing diseases. Some experts warn not to rely on it too much because, despite having some beneficial features, there are also certain risks. Recent technologies show us exactly how powerful AI is becoming in medicine. One example of this can be seen with an AI-led stethoscope developed by researchers in the UK, which can detect major heart conditions, such as heart failure, heart valve diseases, and irregular rhythms, in just 15 seconds. The AI has shown higher accuracy in diagnostic ability compared to traditional tools.

Hospitals are also using AI to help administrative burdens. Microsoft’s Dragon Copilot assists doctors by automatically transcribing notes, summarizing clinical evidence, and even helps create “after-visit summaries,” which allows physicians to spend more time with patients. 
But these advances in AI can come with risks. Accuracy is never perfect, there can be privacy concerns, and an over-reliance on AI. 

From innovations in health care, farming techniques, and transportation technology has revolutionized the way we live, work, travel, and care for ourselves and others. It is clear innovation will continue to drive technological development in all three fields.

Thank you for listening to Moving, Growing, Healing: How Technology Has Changed Fields of Daily Life an episode in the series, Control, Alt, Innovate: Perspectives on Technological Advancements, a student-produced podcast by Uni High’s oral history project team. 
All interviews featured in this podcast were conducted in Spring 2024 by Uni’s eighth-grade class. If you’d like to listen to previous episodes, check out the WILL website at will.illinois.edu/illinoisyouthmedia.