by Daniel S. Papp, David S. Alberts, and Alissa Tuyahov
Throughout recorded history, human beings have needed to communicate and to exchange information. The reasons behind this need have been and remain diverse—to sound alarms, to provide for common needs, to establish a sense of community and human empathy, to deliver information and news, and so on. In many respects, civilization is based on humankind’s need—and ability—to communicate and to exchange information.
However, these abilities have always been complicated by distance, time, or location.1 People could signal or talk directly to each other, but not over great distances. An individual could reduce the distance between himself and the person with whom he or she wished to communicate, but reducing distance took time, and sometimes time was not available. On occasion, the location of either the individual who wished to communicate or the person to whom a message was to be sent made it difficult or impossible for communication to occur. In addition, from the very earliest times, getting the message through was only one of the concerns. The desire for privacy, security, authenticity, timeliness, and proof of receipt influenced how communications were used and often drove communications "technology."
To reduce the impact of distance, time, and location, men and women throughout history employed various forms of information and communication technology. Drums, torches, signal fires, flags, pictographs on papyrus, and writing on clay and stone tablets were among the earliest technologies humankind used in its efforts to reduce the impact of distance, time, and location on communications. Codes, cyphers, trusted agents, seals, and signatures have always accompanied communications and have grown in sophistication along with communications methods. Sometimes people even turned to the animal world to enhance their ability to communicate; King Solomon used messenger pigeons to deliver messages as early as about 1000 BC.2
These primitive and traditional methods and technologies, many of which remain in use today, have improved humankind's ability to communicate, but they were and continue to be limited in what they could and can do. Some approaches require favorable environmental conditions: low wind, line of sight visibility, or good weather. Pictographs and other forms of written communications take time to construct. If privacy or security is desired, extra time is required to translate the message into a coded form. Regardless of how long it takes to compose messages, messages take time to deliver and, if necessary, to decode. Nor could it be assumed that the receiver could necessarily decipher, read, and understand what was written. And, as a function of the means of communications, messages are subject to various forms of distortion. For centuries, then, distance, time, and location continued to significantly inhibit humankind’s ability to communicate, and advances in information and communication technologies progressed, albeit slowly.
In the mid-nineteenth century, this began to change as several technologies matured that enhanced humankind’s ability to communicate more quickly and extensively (except for the development of the ability to speak and the development of the printing press) than ever before. In the short century and a half since then, the impact of distance, time, and location on communications has been reduced to a greater extent than in all previous years of recorded history combined. At the same time, humankind’s ability to enrich messages with images and figures has vastly improved, as has its ability to ensure the privacy, authenticity, and receipt of messages.
This 150-year period may be viewed either as a single ongoing information revolution with three distinct phases, or as three distinct historical periods, each with enough significance to be labelled a revolution. In this volume, for reasons that will become clear, the editors have opted for the view that each period warrants being labeled a revolution. But not all analysts, again as will become clear in subsequent chapters, agree with this perspective.
The first modern information revolution began in the mid-nineteenth century and extended for approximately 100 years. This first revolution primarily enhanced communications. During this period, technologies such as the telegraph, telephone, and radio came of age.3 These technologies transformed not only humankind’s ability to communicate, but also people’s lives. Especially in industrial societies, they changed the ways that people related to one another and altered the ways that business, government, and military and foreign policy establishments conducted their affairs. Given the dimensions of their impacts, these technologies also helped modify the structure of the international system.
The second modern information revolution extended from the mid-twentieth century until perhaps the 1980s. During this period, technologies such as television, early generation computers, and satellites linked the world together in ways that it had never before been linked. These technologies, like the telegraph, telephone, and radio before them, again transformed humankind’s ability to communicate; changed the ways that people related to one another; altered the conduct of the affairs of business and government; and modified the structure of the international system.
Since the 1980s, still more information technologies have been developed and have begun to be employed, technologies with capabilities that dwarf those of the information technologies already in use. We are thus on the verge of a third modern information revolution, one that perhaps should be labelled a "knowledge revolution" since it encompasses advances in information technologies that significantly alter the politics, economics, sociology, and culture of knowledge creation and distribution.
How the technologies of the first two eras evolved and helped shape human activities and institutions is an important story, for it provides an understanding of how and why things are as they are. It provides an understanding of how and why international actors and the international system have evolved. Most importantly, it may provide clues about how emerging information technologies might influence the future shape, relationships, and conduct of human institutions, human activities, international actors, and the international system. Given the magnitude of the capabilities that emerging information technologies promise to provide, these are clues that are well worth having.
Between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, many new information technologies aided and abetted humankind’s efforts to overcome distance, time, and location, but three stand out: the telegraph, telephone, and radio. Together, these technologies can arguably be described as the technologies of the first modern information revolution.
How did this first modern information revolution affect human activities and institutions, international actors, and the international system? There are many answers to this simple question, and we will approach them by exploring one technology at a time.
The Telegraph. First operationalized in a practical sense in 1845, the telegraph sparked a wave of communications development throughout the world. One analyst, writing of the development of the telegraph and the dramatic effects that it had on society during the second half of the nineteenth century, asserted that the telegraph "initiated the first truly electronic communications revolution and gave rise to the age of instant global communications."4
The first experiments that attempted to transmit messages electronically over wires actually occurred in the eighteenth century. However, Samuel Morse, an American inventor, is generally credited with having developed the first operational model of the telegraph. Although a British team invented and tested a basic telegraph in 1837, Morse developed a prototype system that employed an electromagnetic relay and regenerated signals over long distances. These signals were recorded as dot-and-dash messages directly on paper. Morse patented the technology in 1840. Then, with a $30,000 grant from the U.S. Congress, Morse built a telegraph line between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore to demonstrate his invention. On January 1, 1845, Morse sent the message, "What hath God wrought?" over his telegraph wires. A new era had begun.5
Morse’s invention spread rapidly and had immense impact across a wide range of human activities. Within a year of Morse's first message, the United States had almost 1,500 kilometers of telegraph lines in place. By 1851, fifty companies were in the telegraph business in the U.S.6 but by 1861, Western Union had emerged as a monopoly in the telegraph business.
In the United States, the use of the telegraph chronologically and geographically closely paralleled the expansion of the railroad system. Each fueled the success of the other. The telegraph helped railroads communicate and function more efficiently, and railroads in turn expanded the American telegraph network, making it even more effective than it had been. Before the end of the century, communication in the U.S., according to one source, no longer relied solely on a physical infrastructure that "depended on the speed of horses, ships, runners, and railroads."7 Even though the telegraph was at first vulnerable to disruption and loss of signal, it soon rivaled the national postal service in volume of service.
The telegraph quickly entered widespread use outside the United States. As early as 1851, the telegraph expanded the internationalization of financial markets as it connected the London and Paris stock exchanges.8 By the end of the century, business interests and government offices throughout Europe were linked by telegraph. Indeed, the telegraph transformed the conduct of virtually every business transaction and government action since messages were now sent rapidly and accurately over long and short distances.
This was an immense boon to businesses, government, and almost very other form of human interaction as well. With the telegraph, person to person messages could be rapidly transmitted across physical boundaries such as mountains and rivers, thereby creating more opportunities for business expansion and coordination. Much to the consternation of more conservative rulers of the day, the telegraph could also transcend national boundaries, thereby challenging the sovereignty of the nation-state and its ruler. The economic and political ramifications of such capabilities were immense.
The introduction of the telegraph also had an extensive impact on military affairs. For example, during the American Civil War, the military used the telegraph to direct troops, provide logistical support, enhance military efficiency and organization, and relay strategic and tactical intelligence about enemy movements and actions.9 For example, one of the first uses of the telegraph during the Civil War occurred on April 15, 1861, when President Abraham Lincoln sent a telegraph message calling for 75,000 troops to defend Washington. Lincoln received an immediate response via telegraph that 90,000 troops were ready.
The telegraph played a major public policy role in the war efforts of the North and the South. It helped the news media of the day keep citizens informed in near real time about the war and the course of battles, and it provided the northern and southern governments with a new medium through which they could try to mold public opinion. The telegraph also had a significant impact on the way governments related to the rest of society. For example, in the U.S., organizational foundations for expanded military use of the telegraph were laid throughout the Civil War as the American Telegraph Company extended its facilities to the War Department. Recognizing the importance of the telegraph to the war effort, Congress in 1862 passed legislation that enabled President Lincoln to take control of all telegraph lines in the United States.
This led directly to the development of the civilian U.S. Military Telegraph Corps, which soon employed 1,000 operators and hundreds of other workers. Serving the administrative, logistic, strategic, and tactical needs of the War Department and northern armies in the field, the Military Telegraph Corps between May 1, 1861, and June 30, 1866, constructed 15,389 miles of telegraph lines.10
In addition to the Military Telegraph Corps, a Signal Corps was formed as a branch of the military under the direction of the War Department. The Signal Corps often competed with the Military Telegraph Corps even though both served the same war effort. By the end of fiscal year 1865, the Military Telegraph Corps had sent about 6,500,000 messages at a direct cost to the Government of $2,655,500. By comparison, the direct cost of Signal Corps messages for the same period was $1,595,257.11
The newness of the telegraph combined with the sudden onset of the war were primarily responsible for the development of these two overlapping organizations with similar responsibilities. At the end of the war, the Military Telegraph Corps was dissolved and the Signal Corps remained. But there was absolutely no doubt that the telegraph and the railroad were the most significant logistical and communication innovations of the Civil War. Both had an immense impact on virtually all future major wars.
The telegraph also had a sizable impact on late nineteenth century and early twentieth century foreign policy and diplomacy. With the telegraph's capacity to send messages in near real time over long distances, many capitals of Europe before the end of the century were linked together by telegraph. With embassies connected by telegraph to their home foreign ministries and sometimes to their home chief executive, ambassadors, long used to operating on their own, increasingly received instructions about pressing issues from their home office. Not surprisingly, the volume of diplomatic traffic increased as embassy-home ministry links improved and as the difficulty and cost of sending messages decreased. Diplomatically, then, Europe became a much smaller place because of the telegraph. Although it is too much to argue that the European balance of power system of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century remained stable for as long as it did because of the telegraph, the rapid flow of messages between capitals that the telegraph made possible significantly increased the amount of information that European decision makers had at their disposal and certainly facilitated the coordination of policy positions and actions.
The telegraph also soon increased the speed and timeliness of information flows between continents. Efforts to link Europe and the U.S. by telegraph in the form of submarine cables proceeded apace during the 1850s and 1860s. The first effort, headed by the American Cyrus W. Field in 1857, failed when the submarine cable snapped. Field’s second attempt also failed, but in 1858, a third try succeeded. Over 700 messages were sent via submarine cable before it failed later in the year. Despite the potential benefits of a cable link between Europe and the U.S., Field could not raise sufficient funding for the next attempt until 1866. This attempt succeeded, and Europe and the U.S. have been linked ever since. Instantaneous communication was thus possible between continents.
At the level of the international system, the implications of submarine cables for foreign policy and diplomacy were staggering. As long as submarine cables and telegraph lines linked their location of service with the home capital, foreign ministries, executive offices, and military commanders had potential to communicate with their direct reports regardless of where those reports were anywhere in the world. Diplomatic and military command and control were therefore significantly enhanced. One indication of the potential impact of this came in 1903 when U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt sent a message around the world in only nine minutes.
By the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, then, the telegraph had made the world a smaller place. The telegraph had lessened the constraints imposed on communication by distance, time, and location to a greater extent than all previous improvements combined.
But this did not mean that time and distance no longer posed problems for human communication. Obviously, they still did. At the same time, however, other forms of communication were being developed that further abetted humankind's ability to communicate faster and more effectively.
The Telephone. The telephone, building upon the success and technology of the telegraph, is one of the most influential developments in communications history. The first telephonic device that could transmit sound electronically was built in 1861 by the German scientist Johann Philip Reis. Even so, the invention of the telephone is generally credited to Alexander Graham Bell in 1876.
Bell, a Scotsman who emigrated to the United States, worked for the Western Union Telegraph Company. Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, discovered a method to transmit sound and the human voice by electric current. Even though others argued that they had invented the telephone earlier, Bell received the patent for the device and in 1877 founded the Bell Telephone Company. Twenty two years later, the Bell Telephone Company was renamed the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), a name that it has to the present day.
Like the telegraph before it, the telephone had a profound impact on business, government, the military, foreign policy, and almost every other arena of human activity. Less than 25 years after its invention, the telephone was in widespread use in Europe and the United States. In the United States, one of the primary reasons that this occurred—beyond the obvious reasons of ease of use and improved communications—was the principle of universal service.
Because of universal service, extensive long distance and local lines were built during the 1870s and 1880s. These lines created a vast communication network for direct person to person contact. By 1900, the United States had one million telephones in use, with local systems linked into a national telephone network.12 In 1910, the federal government moved to exert its influence over this network when Congress passed the Mann-Elkins Act, which established the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). The ICC had jurisdiction over all telephone service and other interstate business.
Meanwhile, outside the U.S., other industrialized countries created their own telephone networks, many with government oversight and sometimes control. Telephone use was widespread in Europe, but until low cost long distance service was later developed, most telephone use was restricted to local or inter-urban calls. Indeed, recognizing the potential economic and security implications of unfettered international telephone use, many states guarded their control of trans-border telephone (and telegraph) communications.
In the United States, the Bell System grew as it acquired smaller companies during the first three decades of the twentieth century. By the 1930s, the Bell System had acquired monopoly status, which it retained into the 1970s. The Communications Act of 1934 was an important factor in AT&T’s growth, defining the company as a common carrier that could transport telecommunication traffic over facilities that were available on an equal basis to all paying customers, but which could not have a financial interest in the creation of the content carried.13 AT&T’s monopoly status led to increased power and influence for the company, which in turn led to increased government regulation of AT&T.
Most astounding, however, was the growth of the use of the telephone. Founded upon the premise of universal service delivered by a universal phone system that supplied superior service at low rates, the Bell System delivered as promised, both in local communications and long distance communications; by 1939, the number of telephone calls in the U.S. exceeded the number of letters mailed.14
In addition, AT&T formed Bell Telephone Laboratories, also known as Bell Labs, which provided the company and the country with cutting edge technologies. Indeed, scientists from Bell Labs received more Nobel Prizes than any other organization in the world by discovering or developing technologies such as microwave radio, mobile radio, cellular radio telephony, coaxial cables, semiconductor technology including the transistor, optical fibers, and electronic switching.15
As the twentieth century progressed, the telephone became ubiquitous, especially in the United States and to a lesser degree in other industrial societies. In business, the telephone speeded transactions and enhanced communications and coordination even more than the telegraph. In government, its impacts were much the same. In military affairs and foreign policy, the telephone, like the telegraph before it, provided opportunities for enhanced coordination and greater efficiencies through rapid person-to-person communication at a distance. In military affairs specifically, one analyst noted that the telegraph and telephone together "quickened the pace of warfare by shortening response times and increasing flexibility."16 The same analyst further observed that "coupling this speed of information communication with the effect of the railroad on speed of movement, the nature of land warfare was changed in scale by two primarily civil inventions."
By the early twentieth century, then, the telegraph and telephone had transformed human communications. Distance, time, and location still presented difficulties for communications, but the difficulties were by no means as significant as they had been only 25 years earlier. Nevertheless, communications were still constrained by location since both the telegraph and telephone required lines over which signals could be sent. Obviously, this meant that senders and receivers were fixed to locations at which sending and receiving equipment was available. As the first modern information revolution progressed, however, this soon changed.
Radio, the "Wireless Telegraph." In 1894, Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian citizen, sent the world’s first radio signal over a three kilometer distance. When the Italian government turned down Marconi’s offer to provide it with his new invention, he traveled to Great Britain, where he secured a patent for his radio. When he demonstrated his radio’s ability to send messages from shore to ship and between ships that were beyond each other’s line of sight, the British and U.S. navies moved to adopt this new technology to enhance communications at sea. Even more impressively, Marconi in December 1901 sent a message 3,540 kilometers across the Atlantic Ocean from Cornwall, England, to St. John’s, Newfoundland. Eight years later, Marconi received the Nobel Peace prize in physics for his accomplishments.17
At first, radio use was relatively limited because only Morse code could be sent. Even so, increased numbers of commercial and naval vessels were equipped with radio, and the use of radio on land also expanded. However, when Reginald Fessenden discovered in 1906 how to send voice and music via radio, the slowly expanding non-maritime use of radio became an avalanche. By the 1920s, over 600 radio stations broadcast in the United States alone, many of which were owned by nationwide radio networks.18 Other American businesses realized that the new technology afforded significant advantages, and radio was quickly employed to advertise and publicize as well as to entertain and educate.
Because of the growing importance of radio to American business and society, Congress in 1927 passed the Radio Act and created the Federal Radio Commission to regulate the industry.19 Perhaps the single greatest indication of the growing importance of radio in the United States was the trend in advertising revenue; in 1943, money spent on radio ads for the first time surpassed the amount of money spent on newspaper ads.20
Throughout this period, the U.S. Government and the U.S. military played a major role in the development and use of radio. During World War I, the government and military used radio extensively for communications, command and control, and related purposes. In addition, the Navy pressured inventors such as Marconi, Fessenden, DeForest, and Armstrong to put an end to their disputes over patents, thereby helping standardize radio technology.21 And in April 1917, at the onset of U.S. entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson commandeered all wireless radio stations in the United States and its possessions. Throughout World War I, Marconi and others in the radio industry fully cooperated with the war effort and with the Government as it extended its control over radio.22
Military use of radio expanded even more during World War II. Every major international actor in the war used radio extensively in all branches of their armed services. The radio gave commanders more flexibility with troops, allowed greater mobility, and enhanced overall command and control. Indeed, without the radio, Germany’s "Blitzkrieg" warfare could not have been implemented. Meanwhile, governments used radio to inform—and sometimes misinform—their citizens about the progress of the war, to promote nationalism, and to spread propaganda. Some analysts even argued that radio was the "paramount information medium of the war, both domestically and internationally."23
Radio also contributed to the Allies' war effort in its application to radar, an acronym for "radio detection and ranging." Although Hertz demonstrated in 1887 that radio waves could be reflected from solid objects, the technology was not put to use until 1935 when Watson-Watt in Great Britain created a successful aircraft detection system.24 This provided Great Britain with a decided advantage in the early years of the war.
Indeed, radar was used so successfully in the war that Germany blamed the defeat of the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain on Britain’s radar and fighter control network.25 Other experts argued that "the whole evolution of sea warfare in World War II revolved around radar" since radar aided planes taking off from carriers to find the enemy and aided them in their return.26 British and American scientists improved the capability of radar throughout the war, while Germany and Japan lagged in the development and utilization of this key new technology.
By the end of World War II, the technologies of the first modern information revolution had had a massive impact on the way people lived and worked; on the way that businesses and governments conducted their affairs; and on the way that wars were fought and peace was pursued. With their efforts to communicate less hampered by distance, time, and location than ever before, people knew more about what was happening nearby and far away than they had in the past, factored this knowledge into decisions that they made, and changed their perspectives on local, national, and international affairs.
Despite the magnitude of change that this revolution brought to humankind’s ability to communicate, the technologies of the first information revolution did little to alter the structures of the major international actors or the international system. These technologies came of age during an era in which international affairs was dominated by European states. Europeans had divided most of the rest of the world outside Europe into colonies, and there was little on the horizon to indicate that this would change. Meanwhile, in Europe itself, a balance of power system held sway, with Great Britain acting as the principal balancing agent.
In this international system, states were the primary types of international actors, and throughout this era, they remained the primary actors. Indeed, if anything, European states used the new technologies to enhance their preeminent positions in the global power structure to improve their ability to communicate with their far-flung empires and to command and control political and military forces.
As for other types of international actors, even though business use of these technologies proliferated dramatically, the volume of international trade and the impact of international business on world affairs remained small during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Despite improved information and communication capabilities, businesses that operated internationally remained structured primarily as "mother-daughter" arrangements in which the central office granted autonomy of operations to overseas subsidiaries. Other types of international actors such as intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations remained inconsequential on the international scene.
All told, then, even though the technologies of the first modern information revolution had an immense impact on how people lived and conducted their lives, on the way businesses and governments ran their affairs, and on the way diplomacy and war were conducted, the first information revolution had little impact on the structure or function of international actors or on the international system.
As World War II drew to a close, most people recognized that information and communication technologies had made the world a much smaller, if not necessarily better, place. However, with World War II in the Pacific Theater having been brought to a close by the most awesome weapon ever invented, few people recognized that even more significant technological breakthroughs in information and communication technologies were just over the horizon.
Centered on television, early generation computers, and satellites, the second modern information revolution reduced the impact of distance, time, and location on human communications as much if not more than the technologies of the first information revolution. They also significantly enriched the communications experience. The second modern information revolution had sizable impacts on the workplace and economic affairs, on culture and society, and on military affairs and international relations.
The impact on the workplace and economic affairs was easy to discern. In the decade following World War II, as the rest of the world rebuilt from the devastation caused by the war, the United States’ economy changed steadily from an industrially based economy to one based on services. During this time, the number of workers in service industries in the United States grew rapidly, eventually rising in the 1960s to outnumber blue collar workers. Information became a commodity in its own right, and its management and distribution became a major factor in the American economy. New industries developed based on technologies that satisfied these needs. This phenomenon began in the United States, but it soon assumed global proportions as information and its collection, management, and distribution became the hallmarks of advanced industrial societies around the world.
New information and communication technologies also found prominent places in American homes and soon thereafter in homes around the world as the television and eventually the computer entered global society’s mainstream. As the new technologies spread throughout society, their influence began to change cultural relationships and values. In many homes, the television became a central focus of family life, altering the way people interacted with one another and the way that they spent their time. Often, it introduced new values that competed with traditional ways of viewing the world and conducting activities. It also provided more sources of information, sometimes with a sense of greater immediacy, than had previously been available.
These new technologies were not restricted to the workplace and the home. Military affairs and international relations also were strongly affected by these new technologies, with the military and foreign policy priorities of the United States and its allies as well as the U.S.S.R. and its allies helping drive complementary and sometimes converging research in telecommunications, computers, and satellites. Indeed, the combination of these technologies increased military capabilities, provided diplomatic affairs in remote areas of the world an urgency that they previously had lacked, and arguably helped lead to the collapse of the bipolar international system.
This, then, was the second modern information revolution, centered on television, early generation computers, and satellites. Television was a qualitative improvement over radio, allowing much greater bandwidth to be transmitted in a form more immediately accessible and powerful. Computers provided individuals and organizations with a much greater capability to collect, analyze, and utilize information. And satellites greatly extended the global communications infrastructure. As with our discussion of the first modern information revolution, we will discuss each technology separately.
Television. Although it was invented before World War II, television had no real impact on human institutions and activities, international actors, or the international system until after the war. However, when TV took hold, its impact was immense, first within the United States, then within other industrialized states, and eventually throughout the world.
As a technology, television developed gradually. In the 1920s, Philo Farnsworth, Vladimir Zworykin, and Allen Dumont contributed significantly to its development. In 1922, Farnsworth invented the process of scanning an image in a series of lines. In 1928, he announced the development of an all electric television system. Meanwhile, Zworykin in 1923 developed the iconoscope tube and the kinescope television tube in 1926. At the same time, Allen Dumont developed the basic technology for a receiver picture tube.27
During the 1930s, several major American corporations, most notably the Radio Corporation of America, General Electric, and AT&T, recognized the commercial potential of television and invested millions of dollars in its development.28 Businesses and governments outside the United States, especially in Germany, also pursued the nascent technology. By 1936, German television had advanced to the point that experimental broadcasts of the Berlin Olympics were distributed to selected sites in the German capital.29 In the United States, the first American television broadcast was of the 1939 Harvard-Yale baseball game.30
During World War II, television was little more than a technical curiosity. After the war, this changed rapidly. As TV quality improved and programming became more widely available, Americans led the way in buying televisions. As the only industrial state left unravaged by war, the United States was the only major country whose citizens had enough wealth and leisure time to pursue such a diversion. Indeed, the rapidity of television’s penetration of the American market was astonishing; in 1945, only a fraction of one percent of all American families had televisions, while 10 years later, the figure had leaped to 72 percent.31
In the U.S., RCA led in the manufacture of television sets for commercial sale. It was soon joined by other firms that sought a share of the growing television sales market. Three privately owned television networks also emerged in the American market in the post-war years: ABC, CBS, and NBC, and they monopolized American television programming. At first, television programming closely paralleled that of radio broadcasting.
By the 1960s, television had become one of the most influential and pervasive technical developments in history, not only in the United States, but also in other industrialized states. TV’s presence and influence also spread into many of the least developed countries of the world. Even residents of impoverished urban tenements and isolated rural villages found television’s lure irresistible.
Wherever it was introduced, TV had a dramatic effect on society and public opinion. Because of television, men and women saw people and places and heard ideas and viewpoints that earlier, they might never have seen or heard in their lifetime. Recognizing this, many countries developed state-owned or state-controlled television stations, networks, and programming capacity. Other countries, like the U.S., emphasized privately owned stations, networks, and programming capabilities. Still others moved toward a mix of state-owned and privately owned stations. Regardless of whether TV was publicly controlled or privately owned, everywhere it was a medium for educating, informing, entertaining, and propagandizing.
In the eyes of many, television by the 1960s had also led to the expansion of U.S. cultural, economic, and political influence around the world. With the United States leading the way in the production of television programming, programs made in the United States dominated television broadcast time in many countries. This led many countries in the developing world to accuse the U.S. of "electronic imperialism." Even in developed countries like France, the dominance of U.S.-made programs became a source of considerable concern and has resulted in regulations aimed at limiting the amount of U.S.-produced programming.32
Television also had an extensive impact on business. In the United States, business advertising became one of the chief ways to finance privately owned television stations and networks. TV's ability to reach diverse people thus transformed the way businesses approached marketing efforts.33 At the same time, with the dominance of U.S. programs in many countries, familiarity with U.S. products as well as lifestyles increased around the world.
Television’s political role also grew immensely. By 1960, TV had become so powerful a medium within the United States that many analysts believed that the televised 1960 presidential debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon won the election for Kennedy. Later in the decade, with the Vietnam War being projected directly into American living rooms, TV was widely believed to have accelerated the growth of opposition to the conflict.34
Many people also believed that TV was a powerful tool for projecting social morals and norms. Given this belief, many argued, the content of TV programming must be screened and if need be censored. At the national government level, some governments insisted that TV programming include values that they wanted their citizens to emulate. Other governments censored program content to ensure that it coincided with government preferences. Recognizing the potential of television to influence outlooks and attitudes, many governments around the world used television as a tool through which their "official" interpretation of world events, public policy, and national programs could be promulgated. Communist governments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were especially notorious for this approach, although they were by no means the only ones that used television this way. Such efforts have not always been successful. For example, there is substantial evidence that the growth in acceptance of Western lifestyles, consumerism, and pro-democracy sentiment that helped bring about the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe was sped by trans-border television broadcasts from Western Europe.35
Television, then, had and has a ubiquitous impact. By the 1960s, it had carved out a place for itself
in virtually every country, and it penetrated virtually every realm of human endeavor. What is more,
its influence continued to grow, especially after it was married with satellite technology during the
late 1960s and 1970s. Television’s ability to provide graphic visual images was enhanced by the
immediacy provided by global satellite networking. With the marriage of satellite technology and
television, people around the world were able to see not only what had happened, but also what
was happening as it happened. The implications of this for international affairs were immense.
Ironically, when television was in its infancy, few people expected its influence to be so pervasive.
The same is not true for the next technology of the second information and communication
revolution that we will explore: early generation computers. From the time that they were invented,
many people expected the impact of computers to be immense.
Early Generation Computers. The impetus behind much of the development of early generation computers was provided by military needs. According to one noted analyst, "the military, particularly in America, has been involved with computers almost from the beginning, not only as users but also as active consumers who... frequently laid down specifications and provided funds for development."36
The first electronic computer was invented by John Vincent Atanasoff, who produced working models of data processing units and computer memory at the University of Iowa in 1939. The British mathematician Alan Turing followed close on the heels of Atanasoff, developing "Colossus," the first working digital computer, during World War II to crack Nazi war codes and gain access to Adolf Hitler’s military plans.37 "Colossus" was in many ways as strategically important to the Allied war effort as radar.
World War II also demonstrated the need for high-speed complex mathematical computations to help aim artillery and rocket fire. Efforts were undertaken throughout the war to develop this capability, eventually leading in 1946 to the creation of the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator (ENIAC) at the University of Pennsylvania. Invented by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, ENIAC contained 17,000 vacuum tubes, weighed thirty tons, and occupied 15,000 feet of floor space. John von Neuman also made significant contributions to the development of the modern computer with a 1945 paper that outlined the design for a high-speed digital computer with memory.
ENIAC and other first generation computers used vacuum tubes to perform their calculations. Although first generation computers were a significant step forward, the vacuum tubes upon which they were based generated considerable heat, could not be miniaturized, and often burned out. Thus, it was a major breakthrough in 1947 when William Shockley, Walter Brattain, and John Bardeen invented the transistor. The transistor became the basis for a second generation of computers that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. Second generation computers were smaller, faster, and more reliable than their first generation counterparts.
A third generation of computers based on integrated circuits emerged as computer technology continued its rapid advance.38 Much of the ongoing research was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. The unique relationship that developed between the government, the military, and industry helped create an innovative environment for the invention of information and communications technologies. The military used computers not only for fire control and related purposes, but also for more elementary purposes such as establishing constant centralized control "over the exact whereabouts, status, and condition of the last nut and bolt intended for the last tank of the last battalion."39
Early generation computers also had a large impact in business and non-military sectors of
government in areas as diverse as information and data storage, management, and manipulation;
inventory monitoring and control; and communications. In the context of communications, one area
that requires special mention is the development of computerized switching networks.
Computerized switching networks made it possible to create a global switching network utilizing
cables, microwaves, and satellites so that users of most of the world’s estimated 700 million
telephones could talk to each other via standard voice communications or via facsimile machines.
Computerized switches also made automatic dialing and call-back dialing an operational reality.
With the use of modems and other devices, computers attached to phone lines could also talk to
other computers regardless of location. Thus, computer advances permit information and data to be
transferred globally on virtually a moment's notice. This led to the beginning of the globalization of
banking and reservation services, the enhancement of global databases, and the development of
global electronic mail.40
As rudimentary as they were, early generation computers enabled people to store, track, and manipulate more data faster than had ever before been possible. They also linked far-flung locations of the world together more closely than they had ever before been linked. With their capacity to store, track, manipulate, and distribute data rapidly, early generation computers, especially in industrial societies, changed the ways that people related one to another; altered the ways that the affairs of business, government, and the military and foreign policy establishments were conducted; and laid the groundwork for changing the structures of and relationships among international actors.
Satellites. Satellites were also an important component of the second modern information and communication revolution. Because of their location, satellites could relay telephone and television signals over vast areas of the earth. More than any other single technology, satellites provided the capability for real-time global communications. What is more, satellites, when married with television, provided people with the ability not only to hear what was happening virtually anywhere in the world as it actually happened, but also to see events "live." The development of reliable satellites thus had dramatic economic, industrial, cultural, military, and political implications for human interactions and outlooks, and for the international system.41
As with computers, the military led the way in developing satellites. The first U.S. military communications satellite, SCORE (Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment) was launched on December 18, 1958, one year after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I. Since then, military communication satellites have acquired multiple uses including routine communication, command and control of forces in the field, reconnaissance and surveillance, meteorology, and navigation.42
Beyond their military utility, satellites have extensive civilian use, having played a major role in civilian global communications since the mid-1960s. The introduction of satellite communications to the civilian sector began in July 1958, when the U.S. Congress passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which created NASA as a civilian agency to pursue space activities. Four years later, the U.S. Congress created the Communications Satellite Corporation to develop national communications satellites and also passed the 1962 Federal Communications Act, which allowed the FCC to regulate the operation of all communications satellites.43
The first true civilian telecommunications satellite, Syncom III, was launched into orbit in 1964. The world’s first commercial communication satellite, "Early Bird," was launched the following year. It carried only 240 voice channels or one television channel, but it was the beginning of a massive civilian global communication revolution. Although at first only the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had satellites, the technology proliferated when seven countries formed the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (INTELSAT) to create a global commercial satellite system. One of INTELSAT’s more notable accomplishments was its global broadcast on July 20, 1969, of live television coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing.44
Since then, communication satellites have led to the formation of a true global communication network. Theoretically, a global satellite communication network could employ as few as three satellites, but in fact many satellites make up the present-day satellite communication network. Most low and middle latitude countries use satellites in geosynchronous orbit 23,000 miles above the equator, but countries in higher latitudes often use satellites in elliptical orbits because they have difficulty receiving signals from satellites over the equator.
Satellite communications improved tremendously over the first three decades of use. During the early years of satellite communications only a few hundred channels existed, but thousands are now available for telephone, television, and data transmission. Direct broadcast satellites allow companies and countries to beam broadcasts into any location that has a receiver. Store-and-forward satellites, once the domain of government intelligence and military communities, are now commercially available as well, thereby allowing private users to send data and information to a satellite, and have the satellite broadcast the data and information at a later time to a single-site user.
Increased access to satellite communications has already tied the world more closely together as virtually every form of communication can now be transmitted globally on a moment's notice. Global telephone and television satellite transmissions are common. Companies use communication satellites to transmit even the most sensitive data and information throughout the world. Two-way global teleconferencing is increasingly available.
Satellites, then, when married with other technologies of the first and second modern information and communication revolutions, provided the world with a virtually instantaneous global communication capability. Some say that this capability is leading to the development of a sense of global community. Whether or not this observation proves factual, it is beyond dispute that satellites have helped make many people more aware of communities and events in far away places and provided them with a window on societies radically different from their own.