The State and New Forms of Communication: The Introduction of Videotex in Europe and

Videotex, as discussed below, is a novel form of telecommunications,2 an advanced form of information transmission which incorporates characteristics shared by the telephone, video technologies and computers. It is a very recent development, with origins in the mid-1970s, expensive, complicated and often referred to as a leading example of Information Age communications. For all these reasons it has been the object of high-technology policy - state and corporate - in most major Western nations. Its development has been exceptionally uneven, and the same may be said of its prospects. Videotex is therefore an apt choice as a case study in state attempts to guide the sputtering economies of advanced industrial nations into the promised land of post-industrial society.