A Brief History of Communications Revolutions
Craig Jarvis · 2020
The digital communications revolution is the most recent in a series of communication revolutions going back to the written word. Each of these revolutions impacted citizens’ civil liberties, and catalyzed actions by governments to reinforce and augment their power by surveilling the new technologies. Likewise, citizens sought to identify methods to utilize the new communication capabilities without accepting the inherent vulnerabilities of these technologies. This chapter places the digital communications revolution in its historical context, and also highlights a broader trend of citizens’ civil liberties being impacted by each communications revolution.