2.18.2012

Steampunk in the wires

The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers by Tom Standage - Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists

An interesting book, not terribly enlightening from a technical point of view and not likely to win any recognizable literary awards any time soon, but nonetheless an engaging and fairly throrough review of the world's telegraph systems (which unaccountably fails to mention teletypewriter exchanges or radio telegraphy) and a provocative reminder of technology's impacts on the conduct of human affairs (we write, desperately trying to rescue a runaway sentence from colliding with chaos itself but in the end, finally, giving up).

The Internet analogy is a wee bit shaky.

The book is new on the list.

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