Crossed Wires: The Conflicted History of Us Telecommunications, from the Post Office to the Internet

Telecommunications networks are vast, intricate, hugely costly systems for exchanging messages and information--within cities and across continents. From the Post Office and the telegraph to today's internet, these networks have sown domestic division while also acting as sources of international power. In Crossed Wires, Dan Schiller, who has conducted archival research on United States telecommunications for more than forty years, recovers the extraordinary social history of the major network systems of the United States. Drawing on arrays of archival documents and secondary sources, Schiller reveals that this history has been shaped by sharp social and political conflict and is embedded in the larger history of an expansionary United States political economy. Schiller argues that networks have enabled United States imperialism through a recurrent "American system" of cross-border communications. This authoritative and comprehensive revisionist history of United States telecommunications argues that not technology but a dominative--and contested--political economy drove the evolution of this critical industry.

About the Author :
Dan Schiller studies the social and intellectual history of United States and global communications as a part of the conflicted development of capitalism. After working at the University of Leicester, Temple University, UCLA, and UCSD, Dan Schiller finished his academic career at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he is professor emeritus. His books include Telematics and Government; Theorizing Communication: A History; Digital Depression: Information Technology and Economic Crisis; and Digital Capitalism-a term which he coined in the 1990s. His articles and commentaries on contemporary communications have been published widely in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, and he coedits the book series, The Geopolitics of Information, for the University of Illinois Press. Christopher Douyard took the backroads to audiobook narration, though he is no stranger to performing. Christopher has nourished a passion for books and storytelling since his youth, when he would devour Tolkien and volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica with equal abandon. Christopher records in his studio, nestled amongst the oak trees in a quiet, central Connecticut town.