Transcript 1690 And News Papers Pony Express Established Transcontinental Telegraph Completed Telephone Radio •Linked Together •First Continually Published Newspaper •America’s Early Newspaper s •Short History •Contributions •Tidbits T.V. ?? Internet •The Inventor •First newspaper ?? •The First Call •Forever We Are Changed •Phone History •How This Came To Be •A Short Essay •An American Story •First Radio Stations •Advertising Was Born •First T.V. Station •Early Commercial T.V. •T.V.

1861
1690
And
1876
1920
1928
1860
1969
1704
News Papers
Pony
Express
Established
Transcontinental
Telegraph
Completed
Telephone
Radio
•Linked
Together
•First
Continually
Published
Newspaper
•America’s
Early
Newspaper
s
•Short History
•Contributions
•Tidbits
T.V.
??
Internet
•The
Inventor
•First
newspaper
??
•The First
Call
•Forever We
Are
Changed
•Phone
History
•How This
Came To Be
•A Short
Essay
•An
American
Story
•First Radio
Stations
•Advertising
Was Born
•First T.V.
Station
•Early
Commercial
T.V.
•T.V. and
Politics
•How It
Came To Be
•A “Shared”
Experience
•What Is
Coming?
Facsimile of the first
and only issue of
the EnglishAmerican colonies'
first newspaper,
published in Boston
1690.
However….. the Governor
and Council of Massachusetts
issued a broadside order
forbidding the publication of
"anything in Print without
License first obtained from
those that are or shall be
appointed by the
Government to grant the
same."
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Premier Issue
Over three hundred years ago on 24 April 1704, John
Campbell, the postmaster of Boston, published the
first issue of the Boston News-Letter. A small single
sheet, printed on both sides, the News-Letter made
history as the first continuously published newspaper
in America. The Boston News-Letter appeared weekly
until 1776 and had no competition in Boston until 21
December 1719, when the first issue of the Boston
Gazette appeared. Even Philadelphia and New York,
the two largest cities in British America, lacked their
own newspapers until 1719 and 1725 respectively.
This first issue of the Boston News-Letter, as befits a
British colony, was full of news from Mother England,
including lengthy abstracts from mid-December issues
of the London Flying Post and London Gazette.
The local news, occupying only one column on page 2,
consists of brief notices of maritime arrivals and
activities, the appointment of Nathanael Byfield as
Judge of the Admiralty, and the preaching of an
"excellent" sermon by Rev. Mr. Ebenezer Pemberton of
Boston's Old South Church on 1 Thessalonians 4.11:
"And do your own business." The sheet concludes with
Campbell's advertisement informing the public that
the News-Letter would be continued weekly and
soliciting advertisements and subscriptions.
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The Boston News-Letter
Number 1, 17-24 April 1704
America’s Early Newspapers
A Slow Start
A Selection of Early American Newspapers and their Publishers
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Perhaps the most noteworthy weakness in these early newspapers, especially those printed
in the first decade or two of the century, was a lack of controversial coverage. If, as has
been famously declared, a newspaper's job is to "raise hell," then early publications such as
Campell's Boston News-Letter barely raised an eyebrow. The main reason was control by
government authorities, who feared the power of even a fledgling press. The First
Amendment, which promised freedom of the press, was not to come until 1791. In the
meantime, journalists had to cope with a tradition of British censorship. Indeed, what might
have become America's first newspaper, Benjamin Harris's Publick Occurrences, Both
Foreign and Domestick, died in 1690 after only one issue because it ran afoul of the
Massachusetts licensing act. Later journalists simply stayed out of trouble by printing
innocuous coverage or even giving government officials the chance to approve material
before publication. Things changed somewhat when James Franklin, brother of Benjamin,
established the New England Courant in 1721. Emery and Emery write: "The Courant was
the first American newspaper to supply readers with what they liked and needed, rather
than with information controlled by self-interested officials. Its style was bold and its literary
quality high" (Emery 40). Franklin even challenged religious and political authorities, setting
a precedent for journalists to come. The press was still far from free, however, as Franklin's
own case illustrates: some two years after he began his fiesty newspaper, authorities
banned him from publishing it. Nevertheless, press freedom apparently made some strides
during this early period, thanks to a 1735 case involving John Peter Zenger, publisher of
New York Weekly Journal. Charged with sedition after his paper had criticized colonial
authorities, Zenger eventually won the case with the help of noted attorney Andrew
Hamilton. Although the case set no legal precedent, Emery and Emery credit it with
establishing a tone for freedom, noting that "after 1735 no other colonial court trial of a
printer for seditious libel has come to light". (Excerpt from article by Mark Canada)
History of the Pony Express
•
The Pony express provided a fast method to get information from Missouri to California. The
importance of spreading news was significant due to the pending problems of the issue of slavery in
the United States. The Pony Express was organized by William Hepburn Russell as an overland mail
route from between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California in April of 1860. The main
purpose was to draw public attention to the central route in hope of gaining the million-dollar
government mail contract for the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company. The
route began on St. Joseph, Missouri and ran through the present day states of Kansas, Nebraska,
northeast corner of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. The trail length was
approximately 2,000 miles with about 165 stations along the route. The Pony express had on the
average of 400 of the finest horses that were ridden 10 to 15 miles by over 185 riders. The official
end of the Pony Express came in October 1861 with the completion of the telegraph. The most
famous ride and the fastest delivery was done in 7 days and 17 hours between the telegraph line,
and the carrier’s precious letter was Lincoln’s Inaugural Address. It was an important delivery as the
country was in despair over the problems that were forming in regards to the slavery issue. The idea
behind the Pony express, a horseback relay mail service, goes back to at least ancient Rome and
Persia. The first attempt to organize the mail service was not successful. It took about six months to
get a letter from Missouri to California. The emigrants who moved west in the mid-1800’s anxiously
waited to hear from friends and family back home. The people in the west demanded a better and
faster service than the Overland Express Route (Clipping Nevada maps Overland Express jpg) thus,
the northern route of the Pony Express. Could YOU make the RIDE? WATCH and decide…..
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Contributions of the Pony Express
•
•
Most people believed the Pony Express lasted a long time, but it was only in operation for a short 19
months, 2 weeks, and 3 days. The importance of the contributions of the Pony Express are numerous. It
proved that a route could be used all winter blazing a trail for the transcontinental railroad. One of the
most important contributions was keeping communications open from the east to the west. The Pony
Express had many heroes. The advertisements called for skinny men who were expert riders, willing to risk
death. The Pony Express preferred young men, and the ads often times asked for brave orphans. The
chronology dates are very important for the Pony Express. The operations began April 3, 1860, with the
first eastbound mail being carried across county that very day. The next day an eastbound rider left
California while the first westbound rider arrived in California on April 13, 1860. Then on April 23, 1860 the
first rider routed westbound arrived in Benicia, California from Sacramento via Oakland. The speed of these
riders was amazing. Then came the working crews for the transcontinental railroad. On October 18, 1861,
the westbound crews meet the eastbound crews six days later and the transcontinental railroad was
completed in Utah. Officially, the Pony Express ceased operations. Although, there was one last ride on
November 21, 1861. The company failed to get the government contract due to political pressures and the
outbreak of the Civil war. Thus, the end of the glamorous Pony Express, but at what cost? Financially, the
owners spent $700,000.00 on the Pony Express and ended with a $200,000.00 deficit, but the
contributions the Pony Express made to the U.S. was incredibly significant.
LISTEN TO RIDER “BOSTON” TELL HIS STORY
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Interesting Tidbits
Replica of Pony Express
Messenger's Badge
Letter Carried on First Eastbound Trip
Post Mark used on First Eastbound cover
William Cody, aka Buffalo Bill
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Illustrated Map of Pony Express Route in 1860, by William Henry Jackson
~ Courtesy the Library of Congress ~
The Pony Express mail route, April 3, 1860 – October 24, 1861; Reproduction of Jackson illustration issued
to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Pony Express founding on April 3, 1960. Reproduction of
Jackson's map issued by the Union Pacific Railroad Company.
Pony Express statue in St. Joseph,
Missouri
The United States – Linked Together
•
Long before there was an Internet or an iPad, before people were social
networking and instant messaging, Americans had already got wired.
•
1861 marked the completion of the transcontinental telegraph. From sea to
sea, it electronically knitted together a nation that was simultaneously
tearing itself apart, North and South, in the Civil War.
•
Americans soon saw that a breakthrough in the spread of technology could
enhance national identity and, just as today, that it could vastly change lives.
•
'It was huge,' says Amy Fischer, archivist for Western Union, which strung the
line across mountains, canyons and tribal lands to make the final connection.
'... With the Civil War just a few months old, the idea that California, the
growing cities of California, could talk to Washington and the East Coast in real
time was huge. It's hard to overstate the impact of that.'
•
On October 24, 1861, with the push of a button, California's chief justice,
Stephen J. Field, wired a message from San Francisco to President Abraham
Lincoln in Washington, congratulating him on the transcontinental telegraph's
completion that day. He added the wish that it would be a 'means of
strengthening the attachment which binds both the East and the West to the
Union.
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High-tech gadget: A repairman in 1863 working on a
telegraph line
Life as People Knew It - Changed Forever
In this 1861-dated artist's rendering, a pony express rider greets Western
Union linemen as they string wires of the first transcontinental telegraph
A rudimentary version of the Internet not much more advanced than
two tin cans and a string had been born. But it worked, and it grew.
Just a few years after the nation was wired, telegraph technology
would be extended to the rest of North America, and soon cylindrical
wires from Mexico to Canada would jangle with little bursts of
electromagnetic juice, sending messages of every kind and redefining
how
communication
can
mean
business.
The Pony Express, which boasted it could
deliver a letter from Sacramento to St. Joseph,
Missouri, in the unheard of time of 10 days
when it began operations on April 3, 1860,
shut down 19 months later — on the same
day the transcontinental telegraph went live.
As the United States rebuilt itself following the devastating Civil
War, it did so in no small part with money wired from Washington. In
1869, when the final piece of track connecting the transcontinental
railroad was laid in Promontory, Utah, a young news organization
called The Associated Press sent a story about it out on the wire.
One long-term effect was the nation was
connected in real time. For the first time,
businesses could do business nationally. The
government could communicate nationally in
almost real time.
'I really see the telegraph as the original technology, the
grandfather of all these other technologies that came
out of it: the telephone, the teletype, the fax, the
Internet,' said telegraph historian Thomas Jepsen,
author of 'My Sisters Telegraphic: Women In Telegraph
Office 1846-1950.'
In its time, the telegraph was in some ways an even
greater influence on the way people communicate than
the Internet is today.
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One of the Visionaries
Just as the iPad, the iPod and the personal computer had a
visionary genius behind them in Steve Jobs, the telegraph
had one in Samuel F.B. Morse.
Morse obtained a patent for his telegraph in 1840, and four
years later he sent his famous first message — 'What hath
God wrought?' — over a line he'd strung from Washington
to Baltimore with $30,000 in federal money.
The technology took off. In 1845, more than a century before the
TV show 'America's Most Wanted,' a man named John
Tawell was arrested in England for the murder of his
mistress after police received a telegraphed tip, telling
them where he was.
A year later, the AP was formed and began relaying news of the
Mexican-American War through a combination of telegraph
wires and horseback riders, which demonstrated a
limitation in the new technology.
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Samuel Morse (1791-1872) was an
American physicist who invented
electromagnetic telegraphy.
A painter and part-time inventor
who twice ran unsuccessfully for
mayor of New York, Morse was in
his early 40s in 1831 when he came
up with the idea for the telegraph.
He said in his papers at the Library
of Congress that it was inspired by
a
discussion
about
electromagnetics with a fellow
passenger on an ocean liner.
By the mid-1830s he'd developed
Morse Code, the series of dots and
dashes
that
telegraph
key
operators would tap out on their
little contraptions.
The result would flash across the
country, and later around the
world, where it would be
translated back into words on the
other end.
An American Story
'It's a very American story,' said Christopher
Corbett, author of 'Orphans Preferred: The
Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony
Express.‘ Adding that not only was the project
brought in with amazing speed but that it
'completely changed everything in a flash,'
from the introduction of groundbreaking
technology to the country's own self-image.
'California was almost like a satellite, if you
think about it,' he said. 'It was almost 2,000
miles between the Missouri River and the
California slope. But something like the
telegraph made it seem closer.'
Completing the project so quickly also infused
the country with a kind of can-do spirit that he
and other historians say it may not have had in
quite as much abundance when the project
was initiated.
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A group of Western
Union Messengers in
Norfolk, Virginia
Cable telegraphers at the
New York offices of The
Associated Press in 1917
Delivery clerk Joe Martinez
gives messages at Postal
Telegraph-Cable
Company's Radio City
office in New York, 1942
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell
•
In 1876, 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for his revolutionary new invention--the
telephone.
•
The Scottish-born Bell worked in London with his father, Melville Bell, who developed Visible Speech, a
written system used to teach speaking to the deaf. In the 1870s, the Bells moved to Boston, Massachusetts,
where the younger Bell found work as a teacher at the Pemberton Avenue School for the Deaf. He later
married one of his students, Mabel Hubbard.
•
•
•
While in Boston, Bell became very interested in the possibility of transmitting speech over wires. Samuel F.B.
Morse's invention of the telegraph in 1843 had made nearly instantaneous communication possible
between two distant points. The drawback of the telegraph, however, was that it still required hand-delivery
of messages between telegraph stations and recipients, and only one message could be transmitted at a
time. Bell wanted to improve on this by creating a "harmonic telegraph," a device that combined aspects of
the telegraph and record player to allow individuals to speak to each other from a distance.
With the help of Thomas A. Watson, a Boston machine shop employee, Bell developed a prototype. In this
first telephone, sound waves caused an electric current to vary in intensity and frequency, causing a thin,
soft iron plate--called the diaphragm--to vibrate. These vibrations were transferred magnetically to another
wire connected to a diaphragm in another, distant instrument. When that diaphragm vibrated, the original
sound would be replicated in the ear of the receiving instrument. Three days after filing the patent, the
telephone carried its first intelligible message--the famous "Mr. Watson, come here, I need you"--from Bell
to his assistant.
Bell's patent filing beat a similar claim by Elisha Gray by only two hours. Not wanting to be shut out of the
communications market, Western Union Telegraph Company employed Gray and fellow inventor Thomas A.
Edison to develop their own telephone technology. Bell sued, and the case went all the way to the U.S.
Supreme Court, which upheld Bell's patent rights. In the years to come, the Bell Company withstood
repeated legal challenges to emerge as the massive American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and form
the foundation of the modern telecommunications industry.
Portrait of Alexander Graham Bellca. 1914–1919
Born
March 3, 1847
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Died
August 2, 1922(1922-08-02) (aged
75)
Cause of death
Complications from diabetes
Residence
UK, Canada, US
Citizenship
US, UK,
Canada (de facto, 1870–1871)
Alma mater
University of Edinburgh
University College London
Occupation
Inventor, Scientist, Engineer,
Professor (Boston University),
Teacher of the deaf
Known for
Inventing the Telephone
Spouse(s)
Mabel Hubbard
(married 1877–1922)
Children
(4) Two sons who died in infancy and
two daughters
Parents
Alexander Melville Bell
Eliza Grace Symonds Bell
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A Short Essay
•
The invention of the telephone has
made communication much easier.
In the early 1800s, communication
was extremely difficult. News spread
through word of mouth, which left
many people misinformed. It was like
a game of telephone, where the
message spreads down the line from
person to person and the last person
hears a different version of the story.
Then there was the postal service,
which was also slow and unreliable.
Letters would get lost in the mail.
Railroads and steamboats allowed
people to send letters from one city to
another. However, that was also slow.
People relied on the newspaper, but
at first the papers were slow to gather
information and put it together in a
tangible way.
telegraph office. It used a dot and
dash system, and you could only send
one message at a time.
Alexander Graham Bell wanted to find
a way to send more than one message
at a time. In 1876 he invented the
telephone.
Before the switchboard was invented
for the telephone, each person had
their own ring. Every time someone
used the phone, everybody's phone
would ring. It was unorganized and
inefficient. Anybody could pick up the
phone and listen to a random
conversation.
The telephone continued to improve
and eventually they developed
amplifiers so people could have
phones in their home and could talk
long-distance.
The telegraph was next and it lasted
about 30 years. It operated using
morse code. If you wanted to get or
receive a message you had to go to a
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The First Radio Stations
•
One of the nation's first radio stations
began broadcasting in Detroit on August 20,
1920 -- station 8MK, now operating as
WWJ. The station was owned by the Detroit
News, and its daily program was called
"Tonight's Dinner." For some reason, the
station was granted an amateur license,
which soon changed to commercial. The
first station granted a commercial license
was KDKA in Pittsburgh, which began
broadcasting in October of 1920. On
November 2, 1920, Westinghouse's KDKAPittsburgh broadcast the Harding-Cox
election returns and began a daily schedule
of radio programs. Radio soon caught the
public's fancy, and the number of stations
grew rapidly. Now, there are more than
11,000 radio stations across the U.S.
Old Time Radio
KDKA - The first officially
licensed radio station in
Pittsburgh, Pa.
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The Birth of Advertising
•
Radio broadcasting in the United States started with the
Westinghouse Company. The company asked Frank
Conrad, one of their engineers, to start regularly
broadcasting music, while they would sell radios to pay for
the service. Westinghouse applied for a commercial radio
license in 1920, and started their station KDKA, the first
officially government licensed radio station. The station’s
first broadcast was the election returns of the Harding-Cox
presidential race. Westinghouse also took out ads in the
newspaper advertising radios for sale to the public. Soon,
thousand of radio stations emerged that played a wide
variety of broadcasts and reached people across the
country that had bought or built their own receivers. The
home building of receivers created a problem in the
market, since people could simply build their own radios
rather than going out to buy them and the government
was forced to step in. To curb this a governmentsanctioned agreement created the Radio Corporation
Agreements, RCA, was formed to manage the patents for
the technology of the receiver and transmitter. Companies
like General Electric and Westinghouse were allowed to
make receivers while Western Electric was allowed to
build transmitters. Also in the agreements, AT&T was
made the only station that was allowed to engage in toll
broadcasting and chain broadcasting. This paved the way
for the next step in radio development in America, radio
advertising.
WEAF, an AT&T station in New York
broadcasted the first radio advertisement in 1923. Even
with the RCA agreements, other station began radio
advertising. Most of the other radio stations were owned
by private businesses and were used exclusively to sell
that company’s products. The RCA agreements did create
a problem though, it gave AT&T a monopoly over toll
broadcasting and therefore radio advertisements. To
break the monopoly, NBC and CBS were created and
became the first radio networks in the late 1920s era.
Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow became the first
radio journalists, and by the end of the decade the radio
had become an important source for news in America. In
the next decade war in Europe again broke out and it fell
on the radio to cover it. The radio acted to pacify and
assuage the worries of a confused and scared public. More
importantly the radio helped to pull together the nation’s
moral and backing of the war effort. With the end of the
war in 1945 television saw its rise to prominence and
radio began to go on a slow but steady decline. But in the
1950’s thanks to Rock and Roll the radio saw new life.
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TAKE A LISTEN
The First Television Station
•
1928: W3XK, the first American TV station, begins
broadcasting from suburban Washington, D.C.
•
The station was an outgrowth of the work done by
Charles Francis Jenkins in devising a way to transmit
pictures over the airwaves, a process he called
"radiovision." He sold several thousand receiving sets,
mostly to hobbyists, and, after receiving permission to
start an experimental TV transmitting station, aired
programming five nights a week until shutting down in
1932.
•
Jenkins essentially brought the wrong technology to the
field: His receiving sets relied on a 48-line image
projected onto a 6-inch-square mirror to create the
picture, rather than using electronics, the technology
that determined the future of television.
•
An interesting aside: Jenkins was also the first to air a
television commercial. He was fined by the government
for doing so, a practice that was discontinued,
unfortunately, as the medium matured.
(Source: The Center for the Study of Technology and
Society, tvhistory.tv)
•
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A 1928 television from General
Electric initially receives
alternating sound and picture.
Photo: tvhistory.tv
The Beginning of Commercial T.V.
•
By 1949 Americans who lived within range of the
growing number of television stations in the
country could watch, for example, The Texaco Star
Theater (1948), starring Milton Berle, or the
children's program, Howdy Doody (1947). They
could also choose between two 15-minute
newscasts, CBS TV News (1948) with Douglas
Edwards and NBC's Camel News Caravan (1948)
with John Cameron Swayze (who was required by
the tobacco company sponsor to have a burning
cigarette always visible when he was on camera).
Many early programs such as Amos 'n' Andy (1951)
or The Jack Benny Show (1950) were borrowed
from early television's older, more established Big
Brother: network radio. Most of the formats of the
new programs newscasts, situation comedies,
variety shows, and dramas were borrowed from
radio, too. NBC and CBS took the funds needed to
establish this new medium from their radio profits.
However, television networks soon would be
making substantial profits of their own, and
network radio would all but disappear, except as a
carrier of hourly newscasts. Ideas on what to do
with the element television added to radio, the
visuals, sometimes seemed in short supply. On
news programs, in particular, the temptation was
to fill the screen with "talking heads," newscasters
simply reading the news, as they might have for
radio. For shots of news events, the networks
relied initially on the newsreel companies, whose
work had been shown previously in movie studios.
The number of television sets in use rose from
6,000 in 1946 to some 12 million by 1951. No new
invention entered American homes faster than
black and white television sets; by 1955 half of all
U.S. homes had one.
The Lone Ranger
Howdy Doody
Early News Clip
The Price Is Right
60 Years of NBC
News
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Television and Politics
• The election of a young and vital president in 1960, John F.
Kennedy, seemed to provide evidence of how profoundly
television would change politics. Commentators pointed to the
first televised debate that fall between Kennedy, the Democratic
candidate for president, and Vice-President Richard M. Nixon,
the Republican's nominee. A survey of those who listened to the
debate on radio indicated that Nixon had won; however, those
who watched on television, and were able to contrast Nixon's
poor posture and poorly shaven face with Kennedy's poise and
grace, were more likely to think Kennedy had won the debate.
The Debate
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The Internet – How it Came to Be
The Internet has transformed the world. It has
grown to be the single most useful resource on
most subjects. Bills can be paid online, you can
instantly connect and talk to your loved ones, and
you can find the research for your paper without
ever stepping foot in the library. How did the
Internet evolve into what it is today?
The Start
Modern Internet
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ARAPNET: The Start of the Internet
•
•
•
•
In 1969, the ARPANET (Advanced Research Project Agency NETwork) was officially brought online. This is
considered the first version of the Internet, although the term "Internet" was not used until 1974 when it
was used in a paper explaining the inner workings of the TCP/IP system.
At first, it connected four computers at universities in the southwest of the United States - UCLA, Stanford,
UCSB, and the University of Utah. Other computers were quickly added just a year later at Harvard, MIT,
BBN, and Systems Development Corporation.
One year later, additional computers were added from Stanford, additional labs at MIT, Carnegie-Mellon,
and Case Western Reserve University.
By 1970, there were over 23 facilities connected together. In the months and years that followed, more and
more computers were added to this network.
Early Users
This early version of the Internet was not intended for public
use. It was used by government contractors and universities
working on secret projects. The progress on any project could
be checked by anyone connected to the network and updates
could be provided in real time, making it easy to keep everyone
in the project in the loop.
In addition, the early Internet was used by computer experts,
engineers, scientists, and librarians. Libraries used the Internet
as a way of automating and networking their catalogs. The
Internet was an extremely complex system, and individuals had
to be trained to understand how to use it.
Features Added
1972, an early form of electronic mail was adapted for ARPANET.
This early form of electronic mail also used a username and an
address to send and receive the messages.
1972, logging on to a remote computer was established.
1973, file transfers were available between different Internet sites.
1976, the Ethernet cable was developed.
1979, the first USENET were created using the TCP/IP protocol. With
these new developments, newsgroups had been formed.
1983 a domain name system had been created which simplified the
process of Internet exploration.
By 1984 a common computer language had developed that allowed
all computers on the network to communicate with each other.
Back
Modern Internet
•
•
•
The Internet continued to develop and grow. The commands for electronic mail, as
well as other components of the Internet were standardized. This made it easier
for individuals to use the Internet, and thus it became more applicable for the
public in general. More and more universities and libraries connected to the
system, and the amount of websites grew exponentially. However, the Internet was
still difficult to use for the majority of people.
By 1991, the first friendly interface to the Internet was created at the University of
Minnesota. The University essentially created a menu system which allowed for
easy access of files and information between computers on the campus. Thus, this
began the transformation of Internet into a form that the average individual could
use.
Today the Internet links millions of computers around the globe to each other and
contains numerous tools that make finding information easy and user friendly.
Search engines help you find information on any subject by matching keywords
which you specify to sites in cyberspace which pertain to your subject.
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Changes For Us
•
•
•
•
With the Internet came the promise of the erasure of all symbolic borders. If the interstate
highways had allowed physical freedom, the Internet allowed a different kind of freedom, one
unprecedented in human experience.
It was no coincidence that it was initially referred to as the information superhighway:
Seemingly overnight, the knowledge (and trivia and gossip) of the world was available to
anyone with a keyboard and a modem; people who had never met and would never meet
could communicate as if they were lifelong friends.
The old-time television executives no longer had as firm a grip on how citizens would spend
their time; now the individual at his or her computer terminal was given the power to decide
how he or she would be informed, entertained or infuriated at a given moment. No one else
had the absolute authority to program the individual's life; he or she made that decision,
moment by moment.
What in the past might have taken a person a lifetime -- searching for mankind's recorded
wisdom in distant and magnificent libraries -- now, in theory, was available with a series of key
taps from one's room, regardless of how modest. What had once seemed inconceivable had,
in the blink of an eye, become routine.
A Smaller World
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A Smaller World
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