How are media born? How do they change? And how do they change us?
"Media Technology and Society" offers a comprehensive account of the history of communications technologies, from the printing press to the internet. Brian Winston argues that the development of new media, from the telegraph and the telephone to computers, satellite and virtual reality, is the product of a constant play-off between social necessity and suppression: the unwritten law by which new technologies are introduced into society only insofar as their disruptive potential is limited. Winston's fascinating account examines the role played by individuals such as Alexander Graham Bell, Gugliemo Marconi, John Logie Baird, Boris Rozing and Charles Babbage, and challenges the popular myth of the present-day "information revolution."

How are new media born? How do they change? And how do they change us? Media Technology and Society offers a comprehensive account of the history of communications technologies, from the printing press to the internet. Winston argues that the development of new media forms, from the telegraph and the telephone to computers, satellite and virtual reality, is the product of a constant play-off between social necessity and suppression: the unwritten law by which new technologies are introduced into society only insofar as their disruptive potential is limited. Winston's fascinating account examines the role played by individuals such as Alexander Graham Bell, Gugliemo Marconi, and John Logie Baird and Boris Rozing, in the devlopment of the telephone, radio and television, and Charles babbage, whose design for a 'universal analytic engine' was a forerunner of the modern computer. He examines why some prototypes are abandoned, and why many 'inventions' are created simultaneously by innovators unaware of each other's existence, and shows how new industries develop around these inventions, providing media products to a mass audience.;Challenging the popular myth of a present-day'information revolution' Media Technology and Society is essential reading for anyone interested in the social impact of technological change.

• Introduction
• The Storm from Paradise
• Technological Innovation, Diffusion and Suppression
• Part One
• Propogating Sound at Considerable Distance
• The Telegraph
• The First Electrical Medium
• Before the Speaking Telephone
• The Capture of Sound Part Two
• The Vital Spark & Fugitive Pictures
• Wireless and Radio
• Mechanically Scanned Television
• Electronically Scanned Television
• Television Spin
• Offs and Redundancies Part Three
• Device for Casting Up Sums Very Pretty
• Mechanising Calculation
• The First Computers
• Suppressing the Mainframes
• The Integrated Circuit
• The Coming of the Microcomputer Part Four
• The Intricate Web of Trails
• The Beginnings of Networks
• Networks & Recording Technologies
• Communications Satellites
• The Satellite Era
• Cable Television
• The Internet Conclusion
• The Pile of Debris From the Boulevard des Capucins to the Leningradsky Prospect