\nThe Victorian Internet<\/i> is the story of the telegraph system, from the first optical signalling systems in the late 1700s all the way, to its decline as it’s overtaken by the telephone in the early 1900s.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe focus is on the social and business side of the story, rather than technical details. As the title indicates, the author views the telegraph as something similar to today’s Internet: a new way to connect people across the world and speed up communication, with all the attached hype, obsession, hacking, encryption, chatting, techno-stress, and talk about world peace that we got for the Internet. The comparison isn’t new or novel in any way, but many of the similarities and parallels were new to me. Interestingly the book was written in 1998, before the Internet boom got underway – but since the story it tells is 150 years old, none of it feels dated.\n<\/p>\n
\nThis was a diverting and enjoyable book. Read it and enjoy.\n<\/p>\n
\nAmazon UK<\/a>, Amazon US<\/a>, Adlibris<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Victorian Internet is the story of the telegraph system, from the first optical signalling systems in the late 1700s all the way, to its decline as it’s overtaken by the telephone in the early 1900s. The focus is on the social and business side of the story, rather than technical details. As the title […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[77,464,317,334,78,462,463],"class_list":["post-1708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book_review","tag-communications","tag-history","tag-internet","tag-non_fiction","tag-telegraph","tag-tom_standage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1708"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1710,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1708\/revisions\/1710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}