ABSTRACT
The history of the way wars are fought shows that changes in technology have always had a major bearing on their outcome. Likewise, the history of modern mass communications is closely tied to technological change. The contemporary newspaper, radio or television station is unimaginable without computer and communications technology—everything from satellites to telephone modems and video and audio recording equipment. This chapter considers technological change in the context of both modern warfare and mass communications. Since the invention of photography in the nineteenth century, recorded images have been used for the purposes of conducting war as well as for recording the conduct of the war for other purposes (informing the civilian population of what was going on and so on). However, the nature of visual perception achieved a new and deadly synthesis during the Gulf War. Innis divided communication and social control into two major types: those achieved through space-binding media and those achieved through time-binding media.
