Media Technology and Society: A History : From the Telegraph to the Internet

Rating:
Summary: Unreadable except by communications academics
Review: This book is targeted at an academic audience and not at the general reader - and the academic area is not networking but human communications. If you're looking for a readable history of networks (including the Internet), look elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: useful nuggets, but a lot of mud
Review: This book is written for an academic audience, and is only of limited relevance to telecom professionals looking for historical perspective on their industry. A sample quote: "Utterance is, for Saussure, the surface expression of a deep-seated mental competence. In Chomskyan terms..."

The book's thesis - that today's "information revolution" is actually the result of a long-standing evolutionary process - should hardly be controversial to anyone versed in telecom or the development of new technologies. However, Winston is so set on proving his thesis that it becomes a real chore to follow the historical narrative. There are useful nuggets in here, but you've got to sift through a lot of mud to find them.

Rating:
Summary: Unreadable except by communications academics
Review: This book is written for an academic audience, and is only of limited relevance to telecom professionals looking for historical perspective on their industry. A sample quote: "Utterance is, for Saussure, the surface expression of a deep-seated mental competence. In Chomskyan terms..."

The book's thesis - that today's "information revolution" is actually the result of a long-standing evolutionary process - should hardly be controversial to anyone versed in telecom or the development of new technologies. However, Winston is so set on proving his thesis that it becomes a real chore to follow the historical narrative. There are useful nuggets in here, but you've got to sift through a lot of mud to find them.

Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT PIECE OF RESEARCH & ANALYSIS
Review: This book won the 1998 Best Book Award by the American Association for History and Computing. It not only provides a comprehensive account of the history of electronic communications from telegraphy to the Internet, but also offers a model with which to understand the processes of change in the technologies of communication.

The purpose of book is not only to explicate a fuller account of what actually occurred in the telecommunications past but also to offer an interpretation, necessarily synthetic and revisionist, of those occurrences. The model offers an understanding of the history and the current position of communications in our culture. This understanding is not solely dependent on the performance of technology, but is also heavily dependent on an examination of the operation of the social necessities and constraints.

Brian Winston's fascinating account challenges the popular myth of a present-day 'information revolution' in communications technology by highlighting the long histories of such developments. The fax was introduced in 1884. Digitalization was demonstrated in 1938. Even the concept of the 'web' dates back to 1945.

In Part I, the author applies the model to the electrical systems of communication, the telegraph and the telephone. Then, in Part II, radio and television are dealt with. Part III is concerned with computing while Part IV looks at the whole development of electrical and electronic networks from the telegraph to the Internet. The conclusion suggestions, via a consideration of the current state of research into holography, that the model is still valid.

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the social impact of technological change.

Brian Winston is Head of the School of Communication, Design and Media at the University of Westminster, the world's leading school of media and communication studies. He was previously Dean of the College of Communications at the Pennsylvania State University, Chair of Cinema Studies at New York University and Founding Director of the Glasgow University Media Group. As a television professional in the UK, he has won an Emmy for documentary script-writing.

Reviewed by Azlan Adnan. Formerly Business Development Manager with KPMG, Azlan is currently Managing Partner of Azlan & Koh Knowledge and Professional Management Group, an education and management consulting practice based in Kota Kinabalu. He holds a Master's degree in International Business and Management from the University of Westminster in London.