China bids Baidu to Google
Posted on | February 2, 2011 | No Comments
While the big search engine news is the row between Google and Microsoft’s Bing, China’s Baidu continues to become a search behemoth with financial successes exceeding expectations and a dominating market share in Chinese language search.
Sanctioned by the People’s Republic of China, Baidu’s name comes from a poem written during the Song Dynasty over 800 years ago and about searching for a beautiful woman in a chaotic crowd. Baidu, which literally means hundreds, refers to the many glances scanning the crowd before she is finally sighted. The term seems appropriate for the massive quantitative crunching of today’s search engines and especially the complex mapping of the Chinese language.
Located in Beijing and registered in the Cayman Islands, Baidu is the most successful Chinese language search engine to date, reaching 76% of the market in fourth quarter of 2010. It’s total revenues in the same quarter were estimated at $371 million, nearly double its figures from the same period a year earlier.
Some background on Baidu:
Google’s market share fell below 20% for the first time in the last quarter of 2010, due in part, to Google’s decision to reroute its traffic to its Hong Kong servers. The decision was made last year in order to avoid some self-censorship requirements imposed by mainland China.
Anthony J. Pennings, PhD has been on the NYU faculty since 2001 teaching digital media, information systems management, and global communications.
Tags: Baidu > Chinese language > Google vs Baidu > Google vs. Bing > search engines
Comcast and General Electric Complete NBC Universal Deal
Posted on | January 31, 2011 | No Comments
Comcast has now completed it’s acquisition of NBC Universal. Marguerite Reardon reports that the new company will retain the NBC Universal name, but Comcast now owns 51 percent, while General Electric will retain 49 percent. The deal comes after The US Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission recently allowed the joint venture to continue. However, it imposed several conditions on the media corporation, which is now valued at $37 billion. The conditions were meant to keep the new conglomerate from stifling competition, particularly in the online video distribution business.
Susan Crawford, a Special Assistant to President Obama for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy, gave a talk at NYU last November on the implications of the deal.
The new firm will combine Comcast’s 23 million cable subscribers and nearly 17 million Internet broadband users with GE’s cable channels, including Bravo, CNBC, E!, G4, MSNBC, SyFy, and USA, its NBC broadcast TV stations, NBC-affiliated stations, Spanish-speaking Telemundo and mun2, plus Universal Studios and related international theme parks. (I’ve been to the one in Japan.)
The FCC voted 4-1 for the approval, with Democratic commissioner, Michael J. Copps, opposing the deal and warning about the power of the new conglomerate:
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“The Comcast-NBCU joint venture opens the door to the cable-ization of the open Internet. The potential for walled gardens, toll booths, content prioritization, access fees to reach end users, and a stake in the heart of independent content production is now very real.”
PBS did a good analysis early on in the process.
A former NBC employee now in the Senate, Al Franken weighs in on the merger.
Avoiding being just an empty pipe has been one of Comcast’s major concerns. It now boasts on its website that the combination gives them “a world-class cable network portfolio”, one of the world’s most successful movie production studios, and “an Emmy Award-winning television production studio”.
One of the big things to look for with the merger is a serious bid to challenge ESPN in the sports arena.
Citation APA (7th Edition)
Pennings, A.J. (2011, Jan 31). Comcast and General Electric Complete NBC Universal Deal. apennings.com https://apennings.com/media-strategies/comcast-and-general-electric-complete-nbc-universal-deal/
Anthony J. Pennings, PhD has been on the NYU faculty since 2001 teaching digital media, information systems management, and global communications.
Tags: Comcast > General Electric > MSNBC > NBC Universal > Susan Crawford
Communications and Media Policy in the 112th Congress
Posted on | January 30, 2011 | No Comments
The Republican victory in House of Representatives suggests new dynamics for communications policy in the 112th Congress although the majority of Democrats in the Senate, however slim, will make it unlikely that any radical changes will occur in the upcoming year.
In the Congress, “communications” covers a wide range of media and telecommunications issues including those involving cable TV, cell phones, commercial TV, consumer electronics, the Internet, noncommercial television, public safety communications, satellite broadcast, satellite communications, radio, telephones, as well as wireline and wireless broadband.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce is now chaired by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) with Greg Walden (R-Ore.) taking over the powerful Communications, Technology and Internet subcommittee and is likely to combat the administration’s net neutrality initiatives. The subcommittee has jurisdiction over all telecommunication and information transmissions including foreign telecommunications and cybersecurity. The Democrats have named Rep. Anna Eshoo as the ranking minority member of the subcommittee. Eshoo represents northern California and has been involved in telecom and other high-tech issues.
In the Senate, John D. Rockefeller heads the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation with former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry chairing the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, which I have heard is now called the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet. The ranking minority member is Republican John Ensign of Nevada.
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Majority Members – Democrats
Kerry, John F. (MA), Chairman
Inouye, Daniel K. (HI)
Nelson, Bill (FL)
Cantwell, Maria (WA)
Lautenberg, Frank R. (NJ)
Pryor, Mark L. (AR)
McCaskill, Claire (MO)
Klobuchar, Amy (MN)
Udall, Tom (NM)
Warner, Mark R. (VA)
Begich, Mark (AK)
Rockefeller, John D. (WV), Ex Officio
The Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet is responsible for oversight of a number of government organizations most notably the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), and the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Association (NTIA). The NTIA advises the President on telecommunications policy, manages government electromagnetic spectrum as well as its broadband initiatives.
Anthony J. Pennings, PhD has been on the NYU faculty since 2001 teaching digital media, information systems management, and global communications.
Tags: 112th Congress > and the Internet > Communications > Greg Walden (R-Ore.) > House Committee on Energy and Commerce > John D. Rockefeller > Rep. Anna Eshoo > Rep. Fred Upton > Senate Subcommittee on Communications > Technology > Technology and Internet subcommittee
Shutting Down a Nation’s Internet: The Case of Egypt
Posted on | January 29, 2011 | No Comments
Late in the evening of January 27, 2011, US trackers watched the global access to Egypt’s cyberspace shut down. Starting with incumbent Telecom Egypt’s TE Data, Raya Telecom, and other ISPs (Internet Service Providers) around the country began to hit the proverbial Internet “kill switch.” Content from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and emails failed to traverse the country’s cyberspace borders shutting off major flows of information about the protests hitting the streets. It cut off potentially embarrassing pictures and videos depicting violence or calling for the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.
Arbor Networks, a network security company, was monitoring the country’s Internet service providers and created this timeline image of the Internet traffic blockage in Egypt.
The Internet and particularly its social media capabilities had been identified as being crucial to the events in Tunisia that toppled President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali after 23 years in power. As unrest spread throughout the “Arab Spring,” the Internet was identified by incumbent powers as a potential threat.
Internet data primarily interconnects to the historic country using the FLAG, SEA-ME-WE 3 and SEA-ME-WE 4 fiber optic cables. Arabsat also provided Internet connection throughout the region along with broadcast channels, but satellite modems have lacked sufficient speeds to compete with the fiber optic channels.
Rather than shutting down these major data highways or DNS names, it appears calls went out to individual ISPs to immediately shut down groups of IP routing paths using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) that makes core routing decisions. Although virtually all of Egypt’s Internet addresses were soon unreachable, a few valid paths allowed the stock exchange and some other web addresses such as the Commercial International Bank of Egypt to retain Internet connections. By late Monday night, nearly all traffic was cut off with the Noor ISP shutting down its service to major customers like Coca Cola, the Egyptian Stock Exchange, and Exxon Mobile. Professor Jim Kurose explains Border Gateway Protocol.
Perhaps more disturbing was the “Deep Packet Inspection” (DPI) equipment produced in California that can be used to help nation-states “track, target and crush political dissent over the Internet and mobile phones.”
It was one of the early myths of the Internet that it was above or beyond the reach of national governments. A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (February 8, 1996) by John Perry Barlow was an articulate and hopeful vision of a technologically enhanced public space. Written as a response to the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996, which contained the infamous Communications Decency Act that died shortly after conception but left behind 47 U.S.C. § 230, a Provision of the Communication Decency Act. Otherwise known as Section 230 that remains a potent defense for ISPs who wanted avoid the responsbilities a publisher and provided immunity for social media companies.
Increasingly governments around the world have been positioning themselves to be able to control the web in their respective countries and particularly its connections with the outside world. In the US, a bill was introduced in the US Senate in 2010 called the “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act” that increases the government’s control and protection of the Internet infrastructure, including commercial and government assets.
Google has been working with Twitter to provide the Speak2Tweet application that is proving useful as it allows people to call in from Egypt and post messages. BBC reports on a variety of old and new media technologies being used to bypass the nation’s controls.
It is important that social movements keep in front of technological developments like Deep Packet Inspection so that it used for democratic progression and not authoritarian repression. The Global Network Initiative is one example of a consortium of corporations and civil service organizations working to preserve an open Internet.
Update on the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
In February 2022, Ukrainian authorities and citizens were alarmed by several events on their Internet that looked like DDoS attacks and BGP hijacks. It looked like the Ukrainian network was being hacked, but these events were inconclusive. BGP is based on trust between network operators such as AT&T in the US and BT in the UK. It tries to legitimate which routes should be used. In any case, it led to calls to shut off Russia from the Internet.
In line with many sanctions imposed on Russia after it invaded Ukraine, international ISPs also considered such actions. In March 2022, Cogent Communications, a leading backbone provider, and Lumen (formerly CenturyLink) announced they would stop servicing Russia networks. Their Russian customers included the state-owned telecom Rostelecom and other important ISPs. The events served as a wake-up call to the importance of the Internet’s routing system and the need to protect it.
Others began to consider how to protect the region’s network infrastructure and whether to remove Russia from the Internet. But it is important to recognize that the Internet is important for many parts of society, including ordinary citizens. If the public spaces of news and participation are left exclusively to more official media outlets, whole populations could be cut off from Internet access. This may stop disinformation coming from unsavory regimes—but it also stops the flow of alternative views.
Notes
[1] Shutting down a country’s Internet by can have significant implications for communication, information flow, and freedom of expression. Deliberately disabling the Internet is generally considered a violation of human rights and an infringement on freedom of speech and access to information. Here are a few methods that have been used:
Total Internet shutdown: This involves completely disconnecting a country or region from the global Internet. This can be achieved by ordering Internet service providers (ISPs) to cut off all connections, disabling network infrastructure, or deploying sophisticated filtering and blocking mechanisms.
Domain Name System (DNS) filtering: Governments can block access to specific websites or content by instructing ISPs to filter the DNS, thereby preventing users from resolving the domain names associated with targeted websites. This effectively makes those websites inaccessible within the country.
IP address blocking: Governments can block specific IP addresses or ranges associated with particular websites or services. This technique allows them to prevent access to specific online platforms while keeping the rest of the Internet functional.
Bandwidth throttling: Governments can intentionally slow down Internet connectivity by reducing bandwidth available to users. This makes it difficult to access certain websites or services, and severely impacts the overall speed and usability of the Internet.
Social media and messaging app blocking: Governments may selectively block access to popular social media platforms and messaging apps, such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, or Telegram, to restrict communication and the dissemination of information.
Mobile network shutdown: Governments can order mobile network operators to suspend their services, effectively disabling cellular data and voice communication.
It is important to reiterate that shutting down the Internet is a severe measure with serious consequences. While governments may justify it for reasons like national security or public safety, such actions have been widely criticized by international organizations and human rights advocates. The ability to access and share information freely is considered a fundamental right in many democratic societies.
[2]
Citation APA (7th Edition)
Pennings, A.J. (2011, Jan 29). Shutting Down a Nation’s Internet: The Case of Egypt. apennings.com https://apennings.com/digital-geography/shutting-down-a-nations-internet-the-case-of-egypt/
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is a professor of global media at Hannam University in South Korea. Previously, he taught at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas and was on the faculty of New York University from 2002-2012. He first taught at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand and was a Fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii for many years.
Tags: Arabsat > Arbor Networks > Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) > FLAG > kill switch > President Hosni Mubarak > Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act > Raya Telecom > seamewe > TE Data
The Dual Product Media Model
Posted on | January 24, 2011 | No Comments
Digitalization has had a dramatic impact on media industries, causing them to reevaluate their business models and also creating the conditions for new types of media companies to emerge. Media content has always had unique economic properties, and the challenge now is to figure out how the dynamics of digitalization and the Internet will change the conditions and options for the new era of digital coordination.
Before looking at other models such as those that use transactions, sales or affiliate models; examining the traditional “dual product” media model will provide a point of departure to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the traditional media model and what changes and opportunities digitalization will engender.
The dominant media business model has been based on a two commodity model: content and audience. This “dual product” media model works first by creating content for sale to consumers and then by selling that mass audience to prospective advertisers. Media firms produce content that attracts a general or specific audience and those audiences are then measured, priced, and packaged for sale to advertisers.
Television, at least the type I grew up on, relies on the making of a television program, for example, The Green Hornet, to attract a measurable audience, and then sells that audience to an interested advertiser.
Television has depended on “ratings” of their programs to price the air time for sale to advertisers. TV commercials, interspersed within your favorite shows are priced, according to the number of people ratings agencies like Nielsen determine to be watching it. Broadcast television has struggled though with the rise of cable television, the introduction of recording devices that bypass commercials, and then more recently the pressures of the Internet, so they are looking for alternative or supplemental revenue models. Neilsen is a powerhouse in the ratings industry.
Another traditional example is the newspaper, a medium going through an even more dramatic transformation. Newspapers make money by charging readers a specific price to buy an individual issue or a time-based subscription to receive the newspaper for a certain length of time. The number of papers sold is of major interest to the advertisers as they look to see how many people will view their promotions.
The advertisers then buy ad spaces in the newspaper based on the profile of these readers. This creates two products and two buyers, making it a dual product market.
A primary problem in media economics is the calculation of a price considering the competing demands of readers wanting to pay less for the paper and the advertiser who is willing to pay more if the circulation is extensive enough. Determining a price for the paper that will maximize returns is a complicated calculation, and if you add the additional responsibility that newspapers have in maintaining an educated citizenry, it’s not hard to have sympathy for their management.
Other media like radio and magazines share this dual product model, but the numbers for most traditional media continue to decline as readers opt for getting their news and other media content from the Internet. While this business model is far from being dead, it is being challenged by competition and technological innovation. The traditional dual product model is the starting point for media strategy as digitalization offers new opportunities for personalization, drawing on stocks of digital content, and the dynamics of social media.
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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is a professor of global media at Hannam University in South Korea. Previously, he taught at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas and was on the faculty of New York University from 2002-2012. He taught at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand and has received several fellowships from the East-West Center in Hawaii.
Tags: "dual product" media model > advertising > digital coordination > Public Good
Transatlantic Telegraphy
Posted on | January 22, 2011 | No Comments
While Western Union was consolidating its power over the widespread US market, others dreamed of using the telegraph to connect with other continents. The dream of electronically connecting North American with Europe was held strongest by Cyrus West Field, a Massachusetts entrepreneur. Born sickly in 1819, Field developed a fierce temperament and drove himself intensely. An underwater cable had already been tested in New Harbor by Morse but it was encased in a heavy and potentially leaky lead pipe. In Europe, an undersea cable had been placed between England and France in November 1851 and to Ireland in 1853.[19] Field sought to link the easternmost part of the North American continent, St. Johns, Newfoundland to Boston, New York and Washington by cable covered in a type of rubber. The plan was to forward messages from steamers from Europe refueling at St. John’s. Field quickly saw the potential of connecting Newfoundland, but asked why not England as well?
Samuel Morse had already predicted the transoceanic telegraphic crossing in 1853, but Field attracted the investment capital and had the drive to see it through. He received additional inspiration from a meeting with Lt. Matthew Maury, who had surveyed the Atlantic Ocean’s floor with sonar soundings and found a narrow plateau stretching across it. The relatively shallow elevation meant less cable would be needed and it was in less danger of snapping while being laid. The first step was to connect cables over land to the center of US commerce, New York City. Then they would lay the transatlantic cable from Newfoundland to Ireland, the closest part of the United Kingdom. Field formed the New York, Newfoundland, and London Electric Telegraph Company with Moses Taylor to lay the cable along the northeastern coast from St John’s Newfoundland to Nova Scotia where it connected to existing lines. This cable “pared forty-eight hours off the time required to transmit messages to and from Europe.” In 1855 Field and his associates formed the American Telegraph Company, which soon became the largest telegraphic company in the eastern United States. [20]
In 1857, the plan got underway. Over 2,600 miles of wire were coated with gutta-percha, the gum of a tree found in the jungles of Southeast Asia. A natural rubber imported from Malaysia, gutta-percha is a very bad conductor of electricity and was used to insulate the cable and prevent the electric current from being shorted by the seawater.[21] President Franklin Pierce signed a resolution on his last day in office supporting the expedition with ships from the US Navy. Two ships left Ireland with the intention of having the first ship lay cable halfway across the ocean and then the second ship splicing its cable on to the first and proceeding the other 1500 miles. Unfortunately, the cable snapped and the first mission was halted.
The failure of Field’s first expedition fed the motivation of Western Union, who had opposed the transatlantic plan and attracted capital to build their own cable to Europe through Alaska and over the Siberian plains. In 1867, the US bought Alaska from Russia, prompting Western Union to begin to build its lines through to the Bering Sea. To derail the motivation for going transatlantic, they wanted their cable to go under the much shorter (56 miles) Bering Sea. But the company ran into trouble in Siberia where they experienced a lack of trees needed for the telegraph poles. In Alaska, the forestry had proved abundant and the cable expanded rapidly, but vast stretches of eastern Russia were covered with Arctic tundra and provided little support for the materials-intensive endeavor. A similar problem would be experienced by the Trans-Siberian Railroad, which would later supply poles for the vast eastern telegraph line. But it would not be completed until 1905. In the meantime, Field persisted with his plan to cross the Atlantic.
In July 1858, on their fourth attempt, the connection was made between Newfoundland and Ireland. A few weeks later, on August 16, 1858, Queen Victoria sent a 96 word congratulatory message to US President James Buchanan, who preceded Abraham Lincoln. Despite the massive celebrations that accompanied the news of the first transatlantic transmission (a fireworks mishap resulted in the burning down of the City Hall tower in New York City), joy turned to suspicion. It soon stopped working. It is generally considered that the cable was fried when too much electricity, over 2,000 volts, was injected into it. So disconcerting was the breakdown that much of the American public grew to conceive of the first transatlantic transmissions as a hoax. To make matters worse, it did not go into operation again for another ten years.
The Civil War preempted further attempts. The Union confiscated the use of all telegraphic cables and Field offered his expertise to helping the North win the war. This included working with the War Department and other government agencies. At the conclusion of the war, Field resumed his transatlantic attempt. He had been raising capital on both sides of the Atlantic. His new attempt would cost over $5 million and the cable would ultimately weigh over 9,000 tons. It was decided to lay only one large cable. He enlisted the use of the S.S. Great Eastern, a gigantic ship so large that it bankrupted its original backers, who could not find a suitable market for it. But it proved perfect for this objective as it was built to circumnavigate the Earth with 15,000 tons of coal in its belly. Ultimately the cable weighed 21,000 tons when the ship took off in 1865. On the first attempt the cable broke about 300 miles from its destination. Field regrouped. On June 13, 1866, The Great Eastern left Ireland again and this time it laid the cable all the way to its destination in Newfoundland. Since the giant ship landed at Newfoundland on July 17, 1866, Europe and the North America have been in constant electrical communication. [22]
It was the British, with its vast colonial empire and maritime resources, who established the first far-ranging undersea telegraph network. During the 1850s, they connected to Germany, the Netherlands and Russia as well as France. In1870, they laid a cable to their colony in India, allowing London to send a message to Bombay and get a reply in a matter of minutes. In 1871, their outpost in Australia was connected, and three years later the Great Eastern linked Europe to Brazil.[23] International communications moved from the primacy of mails through land carriage and water-faring ships to a new realm of relatively immediate telegraphic intercourse.
Explore a more recent view of global undersea network cables.
Notes
[19] Standage, T. (1998) The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-line Pioneers. NY: Berkley Books. pp. 69-73. Cables laid between England and France and Ireland.
[20] The formation of Cyrus W. Field’s American Telegraph Company from Citibank 1812-1970. p. 21.
[21] Clarke, A. (1992) How the World was One. New York: Bantam Books. p. 103. Gutta-percha as a natural insulator for undersea cables.
[22] I want to thank Darrell Roe for his class notes on the transatlantic cable.
[23] Clarke, A. (1992) How the World was One. New York: Bantam Books. p. 102. Globalization of undersea cables.
Anthony J. Pennings, PhD has been on the NYU faculty since 2001 teaching digital media, information systems management, and global communications.
Tags: Cyrus West Field > Darrell Roe > global undersea network cables > Great Eastern > How the World was One > S.S. Great Eastern > Samuel Morse > Transatlantic Cable > Transatlantic Telegraph > Transatlantic Telegraphy
Telegraphy: The Time-Space Governmentality, Part II
Posted on | January 22, 2011 | No Comments
This continues the argument started in Part I
What Hath God Wrought?
It is generally acknowledged that Samuel Morse did not invent the telegraph, but the painter and NYU professor can nevertheless be credited with its rapid development and commercialization. Morse first became enamored with the idea of transmitting “intelligence” by electricity on a transatlantic trip from Europe in 1832 after the topic of electromagnetism came up during a dinner conversation. Unaware of the difficulty others had getting a signal to travel over wires, he set out first to develop a code that could represent alphanumerical symbols with short and long bursts of electrical current. Inspired by his new communication code, Morse set out over the next five years to assemble the right technology to transmit it. By 1838, he was traveling to Washington, London, and continental Europe to gain support for innovations to make the telegraph work better.
Morse obtained a $30,000 grant from the US Congress in 1842 to construct a telegraph line using simplified technology that made and broke a circuit producing dashes and dots of sound that a trained operator could interpret and send.[9] He hired Ezra Cornell, the future head of Western Union and founder of Cornell University to design and build a machine that would lay the telegraph cable underground. Morse and Cornell built the line between Washington DC and Baltimore (but not underground) during 1843 and Morse sent the famous message “What hath God wrought?” on May 24, 1844. Morse’s system of a transmission system plus a learnable code helped standardize an economic, workable telegraph model.
The basic components of the Morse code were electrical signals sent through the network and interpreted by the human receiver as a “dot” or a “dash.” These were standardized in International Morse code with set time durations to distinguish between the two elemental code signals.[10] The dot was set as a very minimal duration while the dash was equal to three times the duration of the dot. The time between each element, character, and word was also important. The time between each dot or dash was one dot while the time between each character was three dots. The time between words was supposed to equal seven dots. No electrical current flowed through the telegraph line during the idle time between elements, characters, and words. The telegraph was very labor intensive and furthermore, required very particular and demanding skills. [11]
While most considered the telegraph a novelty at first, its fame grew and it began to attract private capital. In May of 1845, the Magnetic Telegraph Company was formed and soon lines were being built from New York to Boston, Buffalo, Philadelphia, and points further west. The initial fee: twenty-five cents for ten words.[12] Morse’s telegraphic code quickly became the standard language of the telegraph and it attracted the attention of many new companies. Some licensed his patents while others tried to implement rival technologies like Royal Hause’s printing telegraph. By 1851, over 50 different US companies were in operation.
The transport of electrical signals over metallic wires resulted in almost instantaneous transmission across large distances for the first time. Despite high prices, it was often much more economical than a communication system dependent on the available modes of transportation, such as steamships and locomotives, stagecoaches, and even the famed “Pony Express.” News traveled quickly, prices of goods synchronized between different geographical areas, and the West was tamed as descriptions of outlaws were quickly distributed. By 1900, in the era of J.P. Morgan, the modern mentality had incorporated new modes of space, time, and institution.
Citation APA (7th Edition)
Pennings, A.J. (2022, Oct 11). Telegraphy: The Time-Space Governmentality, Part II. apennings.com https://apennings.com/telegraphic-political-economy/telegraphy-the-space-time-governmentality-i/
Notes
[9] Clarke, A. (1974) Voice Across the Sea. New York: Harper & Row. p. 22. Morse information. This is Arthur C. Clarke of satellite and sci-fi fame.
[10] The International Morse code was most prevalent of its variants.
[11] My familiarity with the technical aspects of the telegraph was enhanced by the website of Jared Hall entitled “A Brief History of Data Communications”. Last Revised in December 1996.
[12] Standage, T. (1998) The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-line Pioneers. NY: Berkley Books. pp. 25-55.
This is will be continued in a future posts on Ezra Cornell and Western and another on Lincoln and the Telegraphic War.
Anthony J. Pennings, PhD has been on the NYU faculty since 2001 teaching digital media, information systems management, and global communications.
Tags: Ezra Cornell > Magnetic Telegraph Company > Morse Code > Samuel Morse > Western Union
Telegraphy: The Time-Space Governmentality
Posted on | January 21, 2011 | No Comments
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By reducing what previously took weeks, to a minute, it (the telegraph) forced the acceleration of methods of obtaining, processing, and codifying information, thus laying the foundation of what decades later was to be called “data processing.”
– Moreno Fraginals [1]
As argued in Tom Standage’s The Victorian Internet, the development of widescale telegraphy was far more disruptive and disconcerting for those of the 19th century than the modern Internet was for us at the turn of the 2nd millennium. “If any generation has the right to claim that it bore the full bewildering, world-shrinking brunt of such a revolution, it is not us—it is our nineteenth-century forebears.”[2] From roughly 1840 to 1892, the world that had known only communication by ship, horse and the occasional pigeon was suddenly confronted by the implementation of an electric telegraph network.
The transport of electrical signals over metallic wires resulted for the first time in almost instantaneous transmission across large distances and was often much more economical than a communication system dependent on the available modes of transportation. News traveled quickly, prices of goods synchronized between different geographical areas, and the West was tamed as descriptions of outlaws were quickly distributed. By 1900, in the era of J.P. Morgan, the modern mentality had incorporated new modes of space, time, and institution.
The telegraph was strongly linked to the railroads and steamships. Invented in England in 1825 and introduced in the US by 1829, the steam locomotive was in itself a dramatic communication revolution, speeding up the movement of farm and industrial goods, hauling postal mail and providing humans “true mobility” for the first time.[3] The domestication of steam by James Watts propelled its wide-scale use by Britain’s burgeoning industry in the late 18th century. The steam-powered locomotives were first used coal mines in Pennsylvania for transporting coal. The power of trains soon exceeded that of horsepower and the limitations of the animal and wind-based speed. Speeds soon reach 25-40 miles an hour.
As trains and steamships became more prevalent, they required the use of the telegraph to coordinate their movements. “Without the telegraph, and subsequent electronic communication modes, rapid-transit transportation would be confined to a few journeys per day for a small minority and a tiny proportion of manufactured goods. Mass transportation demands precisely timed and ‘spaced’ movements, which in turn presumes the capability of communicating ‘ahead of time’ what is planned.”[4] Together the two technologies and their control over the time-space relationship helped propel the United States to the forefront of industrial nations.
Understanding this new metamorphosis of communicative capability and how it set the stage for a domestic and global system of electronic communications requires that it be analyzed in light of a number of historical developments.
- One was the drive in the US to expand westward and connect with the Pacific. Driven by the rapid rise of immigration in late 1800s, emigrants moved further west to settle the lands and make a new life for themselves. The railroad was integral to this process of westward expansion and was a significant user of the telegraph as well.
- Second, the struggle with the South resulted in the Civil War and the subsequent utility of using electronic communications to conduct military activities as well as to keep speculators in the financial centers informed of battle developments. The war-disciplined military also provided an important source of managerial talent for the new telegraphic political economy.
- Third was a system of transnational capital that embraced the telegraph and ticker-tape machines in order to facilitate investment opportunities in the emergent industrial economy. Previewed by the famous Civil War battle between the U.S.S. Monitor and Merrimac ironclad ships, the US would expand beyond railroads to shipbuilding and other steel-based manufacturing activities.
Laws pertaining to telegraphy did not come about under the rubric of free speech but rather, from the precedents established in railroad law. Early on, the telegraph was considered more of a business machine than a print technology. Initially, it was used primarily to transmit stock exchange information. Before the Civil War, over half its messages related to stocks and 80 percent of its messages were commercial.[5] Despite telegraphs using the printed word, it was excluded from being legally examined under the constitutional protection of free speech because of its expense. Ranting editorials or even short news items were prohibitively expensive for the newspapers.
The British Empire was quick to make use of the telegraph. Connected to the US in 1868, Britain laid a cable to India in 1870 and shortly after to Australia. Its claim to be the world empire that the sun never set on was due to its rapid deployment of telegraph lines throughout its territories and directly to London. By the end of the century, it had fully established telegraph links for commercial, diplomatic, and military purposes across the world.
Unlike the US and British experience, European nations banded together to guide the expansion of the telegraph. It was France’s Napoleon III who called for the international conference that lead to the establishment of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). “Its mission was to determine procedures, standards, and common rates between member countries, and to record telegraph traffic.”[6] The ITU would guide the future of the telegraph, as well as its successors, the telex, the telephone, and other telecommunications technologies for the next century and beyond.
This entry introduced how technology, events and policy converged to create a radical new form of corporate and governmental power. This technology collapsed factors of time and distance and created a global system of “data” networking capable of transferring new types of commercial and strategic information. The telegraph was a visual, text-oriented device. As such it worked nicely with bureaucracies’ need for rules and instructions. Instantaneous communication through telegraph lines challenged the postal system as the fastest method of sending written text. Consequently, it helped shape types of tabular and hyper-rationalized knowledge that transformed organizational power over time and distance.
This argument continues in Part II focused on Samuel Morse.
Citation APA (7th Edition)
Pennings, A.J. (2011, Jan 11). Telegraphy: The Time-Space Governmentality. apennings.com https://apennings.com/telegraphic-political-economy/telegraphy-the-space-time-governmentality/
Notes
[1] This quote was from Mattelart and Schmucler (1985) Communication and Information Technologies: Freedom of Choice for Latin America? and was originally attributed to Moreno Fraginals, a Cuban historian. p. 41.
[2] Standage, T. (1998) The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-line Pioneers. NY: Berkley Books.
[3] Drucker, P. (1999) “Beyond the Information Revolution,” THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. October. P.47-57.
[4] Anthony Giddens tied the relationship together between the telegraph and transportation in his work on administrative power and internal pacification in The Nation-State and Violence. (1987) San Francisco, CA: University of California Press. This quote is from p. 175.
[5] Ibid, p. 94.
[6] ITU quote from Armand Mattelart (2000) Networking the World: 1794-2000. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. p.7.
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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is the Professor of Global Media at Hannam University in South Korea. Previously, he taught at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas and was on the faculty of New York University from 2002-2012. He also taught at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand and was a Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii during the 1990s.
Tags: Civil War > Telegraph > The Victorian Internet > time-space power > Tom Standage
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