ABSTRACT
Challenging the popular myth of a present-day 'information revolution', Media Technology and Society is essential reading for anyone interested in the social impact of technological change. Winston argues that the development of new media forms, from the telegraph and the telephone to computers, satellite and virtual reality, is the product of a constant play-off between social necessity and suppression: the unwritten law by which new technologies are introduced into society only insofar as their disruptive potential is limited.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |15 pages
Introduction: A Storm from Paradise
part |48 pages
Propagating Sound at Considerable Distances
chapter |11 pages
The Telegraph
chapter |21 pages
Before the Speaking Telephone
chapter |14 pages
The Capture of Sound
part |79 pages
The Vital Spark and Fugitive Pictures
chapter |21 pages
Wireless and Radio
chapter |12 pages
Mechanically Scanned Television
chapter |26 pages
Electronically Scanned Television
chapter |18 pages
Television Spin-Offs and Redundancies
part |96 pages
Inventions for Casting up Sums Very Pretty
chapter |19 pages
Mechanising Calculation
chapter |23 pages
The First Computers
chapter |17 pages
Suppressing the Main Frames
chapter |21 pages
The Integrated Circuit
chapter |14 pages
The Coming of the Microcomputer
part |96 pages
The Intricate Web of Trails, this Grand System