Debating New Media

Rewriting Communications History

Bibliographic Data

ID4021344
AuthorsRichard R John (corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume64
Issue2
Pages308-358
Publication date2023-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTechnology and Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0040-165X • E-ISSN: 1097-3729
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/tech.2023.0055
PMID38588231
OpenAlexW4375845980
LanguageEN
Citations received3

Many historians, journalists, and media mavens have traced the genealogy of Victorian communications networks backward, beginning with radio after World War I and continuing with personal computing in the 1980s and ending with the internet today. This impulse has accelerated with the rise of electronic commerce, social media, and virtual reality. This essay proposes a different agenda. Drawing on recent historical writing on mythmaking, materiality, and political economy and illustrated with case studies from Europe, North America, Asia, and North Africa, it reenvisions the history of new media by telling the story of Victorian communications networks in relation to the issues of their day, not ours. The essay spans five networks in the period between 1830 and 1914: the landline telegraph, the undersea cable, the telephone, the wireless telegraph, and the mail

Advertising · Aesthetics · Art · Business · Digital era · Landline · Materiality (auditing) · Media studies · New media · Phone · Political science · Politics · Relation (database) · Rewriting · Sociology · Telecommunications · The Internet · World Wide Web · Australian History and Society · Computer Science · Engineering · History · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Law · Media Studies and Communication

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access