"Technological doublespeak"
Subtitle: metaphors, public policy and the development of Canada's first domestic communications satellite system, 1966--1970.
Published: 2005
Language: eng
Number of pages: 257
Description: This dissertation examines the introduction of domestic communications satellites in Canada from 1966--1970, resulting in the formation of the corporation Telesat Canada. Various interest groups, such as telecommunication providers and broadcasters, vied for control over this new and potentially competitive system, using telling rhetoric to influence how communications satellites were handled within policy circles. The result was not predictable, although it looked as if it should have been given the nature of the technology and the interests involved. Satellite policy took twists and turns at key moments, with far-reaching results for industrial and communications policy.While no one would dispute the role played by interest groups, I argue that something else was at play: specifically, the metaphors used to describe the new domestic satellite system. The technology was conceptualized in particular ways as evidenced in the metaphors used by policy makers, and these conceptualizations, in turn, influenced everyone's decisions. In addition, ambiguity often served the purposes of policy actors best, and was prominent in discussions about this novel and complex technology. The choices made about Canadian domestic communication satellites were thus bound up in the ways that this technology was conceived of and talked about, and included decisions such as creating a mixed corporation that would not compete for business with the established common carriers, regulating satellites as a complete system like microwave networks, and allowing Telesat to purchase its first satellites from an American as opposed to a Canadian company. The situation would be unexceptional except for the fact that many of the results of the decisions were not successful. As such, the viability of this new and promising technology was cast into doubt, and Canada's much vaunted leadership in the communications field was squandered.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-10, Section: A, page: 3783.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

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