a conscious being, Eric Hughes wrote:
Harry Shapiro mentions what sounds like an excellent little book, titled "The Invisible Weapon"
I've made a directory called clipper/ in the ftp site. I'm looking for information to fill it up with.
Harry, I'd like to publicly ask you to write an annotated bibliography entry for this book so that I could put it up. Full reference details, of course, two or three sentences describing the contents of each chapter, and a small summary. Thanks in advance.
Hope this is close enough: The Invisible Weapon. Telecommunications and International Politics (1851-1945) By Daniel R. Headrick, Prof. of History and Social Sciences at Roosevelt University, author of "The Tools of the Empire" and "The Tentacles of Progress." Copyright 1991 Oxford University Press, Inc. ISBN: 0-19-506273-6 1. Telecommunications - History 2. Telecommunications - Political aspects - History 3. Telecommunications - Military aspects - History 4. World Politics -- 1900 - 1945 5. World Politics -- 19th century
From the book jacket - "A vital instrument of power, telecommunications is and always has been a profoundly political technology. In "The Invisible Weapon," Headrick examines the political history of telecommunications from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of world war II, and illustrates how this technology gave nations a new instrument for international relations.
Headrick's discusses the political aspects of information technology in modern history. He shows how telegraphy created conflicts in far-flung empires which hastened the deterioration of diplomacy on the brink of the first world war; increased the political interest in controlling news; and how the security of telecommunications made communications strategy, communications intelligence, and cryptography decisive tools during the two world wars." This book is of interest to be because it details all of the positive accepts of why a government "needs" to know everything that is telecommunicated everywhere it can. Even more importantly is shows how the British government routinely intercepted communications sent through British owned telecommunications infrastructure despite publicly claiming they would never do such a thing. It also shows how interception "hastened the deterioration of diplomacy." The Chapters: 1. Telecommunications and International relations 2. The New Technology 3. The Expansion of the World Cable Network, 1866-1895 4. Telegraphy and Imperialism in the Late Nineteenth Century 5. Crisis at the Turn of the Century, 1895-1901 6. The Great Powers and the Cable Crisis, 1900-1913 7. The Beginnings of Radio, 1895 - 1914 8. Cables and Radio in World war I 9. Communications Intelligence in World War I 10. Conflicts and Settlements, 1919 - 1923 11. Technological Upheavals and Commercial Rivalries, 1924 - 1939 12. Communications Intelligence in World War II 13. The War at Sea 14. The Changing of the Guard 15. Telecommunications, Information, and Security /harry