Global Communications since 1844: Geopolitics and Technology
Richard R. John · Technology and Culture · 2000
During the past five hundred years, posits historical geographer Peter Hugill, there have been some "interesting regularities" in human history that have been "somewhat controlled" by technologies for moving people, goods, information, and ideas (p. 1). In a previous book on transportation technology, World Trade since 1431 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), Hugill considered the movement of people and goods. Here his focus is on the movement of information and ideas. For 130 years, Hugill contends, telecommunications has been the key technology in world politics: "If information is power, whoever rules the world's telecommunications system commands the world" (p. 2). To illustrate his thesis, Hugill has written a history of long-distance communications in the century between 1844--when the first "user-friendly" electric telegraph was commercialized in the United States--and 1945, when radio and radar helped the Allies defeat the Axis in the Second World War.