|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
|
Product Description
From Amazon
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A story as valid today as it was over 150 years ago....,
By Apprentice (Montreal, Qc Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Victorian Internet (Paperback)
First off, A very well to the point read, worth the price.Now, overall this book just blew me away with all the comparisons between the birth of the telegraph and the birth of the internet. Even though the telegraph was created 150 years ago, the lessons discussed in the book, and the technological outcomes, are still being felt today. So are the struggles to keep up with demand, privacy issues, and safety on the Web.(The term "world wide web" was actually coined during Victorian times, but rarely used) As pointed out by the author, the Victorians had many issues when it came to dealing with the telegraph, and seeing how they coped with that "new" technology, and all its applications to their "modern life"gives us, 150 years later, the hope of a better tomorrow, via the 21st century Internet. Also, I would recommend anyone who has read James Burke's Book CONNECTIONS to give this book a try (and vice versa).
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Could have been a great story.,
By
This review is from: The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers (Hardcover)
The author missed what could have been a great story in this journalistic (in the worst sense of the word) story of this fascinating invention. The hook which attempts to link the telegraph with the internet is a strained metaphor -- an attempt to make the book relevant.Missed or lightly touched on is how the telegraphy truly changed the world -- how wars were fought, how business is conducted. Instead we get a lot of the fluffy stories of people getting married by telegraph etc. Also glossed over are any real technical details about how the various gadgets worked. The author obviously doesn't know the difference between a volt and jolt and assumes the readers are equally ignorant. Pity because the relationship between invention and history is a great story and the telegraph is a great way of telling this story. This book just skims the surface.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Past and future,
By FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (HALL OF FAME)
This review is from: Victorian Internet (Mass Market Paperback)
The title of this book, 'The Victorian Internet,' refers to the 'communications explosion' that took place with the advent and expansion of telegraph wire communications. Prior to this, communication was notoriously slow, particularly as even postal communications were subject to many difficulties and could take months for delivery (and we complain today of the 'allow five days' statements on our credit cards billings!). The parallels between the Victorian Internet and the present computerised internet are remarkable. Information about current events became relatively instantaneous (relative, that is, to the usual weeks or months that it once took to receive such information). There were skeptics who were convinced that this new mode of communication was a passing phase that would never take on (and, in a strict sense, they were right, not of course realising that the demise of the telegraph system was not due to the reinvigoration of written correspondence but due to that new invention, the telephone). There were hackers, people who tried to disrupt communications, those who tried to get on-line free illegally, and, near the end of the high age of telegraphing, a noticeable slow-down in information due to information overload (how long is this page going to take to download?? isn't such a new feeling after all). The most interesting chapter to me is that entitled 'Love over the Wires' which begins with an account of an on-line wedding, with the bride in Boston and the groom in New York. This event was reported in a small book, Anecdotes of the Telegraph, published in London in 1848, which stated that this was 'a story which throws into the shade all the feats that have been performed by our British telegraph.' This story is really one of love and adventure, as the bride's father had sent the young groom away for being unworthy to marry his daughter, but on a stop-over on his way to England, he managed to get a magistrate and telegraph operator to arrange the wedding. The marriage was deemed to be legally binding. A very interesting and remarkable story that perhaps would have been forgotten by history had history not set out to repeat itself with our modern internet.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
|
