A Nation Transformed by Information: How Information Has Shaped the United States from Colonial Times to the Present

Book Overview

This book makes the startling case that North Americans were getting on the "information highway" as early as the 1700's, and have been using it as a critical building block of their social, economic, and political world ever since.
By the time of the founding of the United States, there was a postal system and roads for the distribution of mail copyright laws to protect intellectual property, and newspapers, books, and broadsides to bring information...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195128141
• ISBN13: 9780195128147
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 404 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

An exciting history of information media.

This book is a collection of essays on the movement of information, and how it has transformed the United States from its colonial beginnings to today. At the very beginning, the founders of the country subsidized the transportation of newspapers through the postal system; this allowed the free flow of information between cities and states, across the entire continent. As technology increased, it inevitably speeded and expanded the amount of information flowing throughout the country--from the railroad, through the telegraph, telephone, radio, motion pictures, television, and on into computers.This book is an exciting history of information media. Though written by no less than seven contributors, it pulls together into seamless whole, almost as if written by one author. The depth of information is breathtaking, and the conclusions reached are fascinating. Indeed, I think that they admirably proved their contention that there was continuity in the development of information media, and I myself repeatedly saw history repeat itself through their narrative, right up to today.This is a fascinating book, and one that I recommend without reservation.