Technologies of FreedomA communications revolution is displacing print with cables, computers, videodisks, and satellites. In a masterly synthesis of history, law, and technology, the author lays bare the elements of this problem and suggests measures to ensure the preservation of freedom. |
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User Review - keylawk - LibraryThingPool examines the impact of communications technology on civil rights and the rights protected by the First Amendment. He argues that restrictive government regulation is not inevitable. Briefs many court cases, and supplies a detailed Index. Read full review
This technological tour de force is simply breathtaking in its polemical power and predictive capabilities. Reading this book more than 20 years after it was published, one comes to believe that Pool must have possessed a crystal ball or had a Nostradamus-like ability to foresee the future.
For example, long before anyone else had envisioned what we now refer to as "cyberspace," Pool was describing it in this book. "Networked computers will be the printing presses of the twenty-first century," he argued in his remarkably prescient chapter on electronic publishing. "Soon most published information will disseminated electronically." Few probably believed him in 1983, but no one doubts him now. Meanwhile, he did all this while also providing a passionate defense of technological freedom and freedom of speech in the electronic age. If you care about those things, read this book. It is a masterpiece.
Contents
A Shadow Darkens i | 1 |
Printing and the Evolution of a Free Press | 11 |
Electronics Takes Command | 23 |
The First Amendment and Print Media | 55 |
Carriers and the First Amendment | 75 |
Broadcasting and the First Amendment | 108 |
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Bibliographic information
| Title | Technologies of Freedom Belknap Press Series |
| Author | Ithiel de Sola POOL |
| Edition | reprint, revised |
| Publisher | Harvard University Press, 1983 |
| ISBN | 0674872339, 9780674872332 |
| Length | 299 pages |
| Subjects | › Political Science / General Technology & Engineering / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |