The People's Network
Subtitle: The Political Economy of the Telephone in the Gilded Age
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: Jan 08, 2014
Format: hardcover
Number of pages: 344
ISBN-13: 9780812245691
Description: "The People's Network reconstructs the story of the telephone's contentious beginnings, exploring the interplay of political economy, business strategy, and social practice in the creation of modern North American telecommunications. Drawing from government documents in the United States and Canada, independent telephone journals and publications, and the archives of regional Bell operating companies and their rivals, Robert MacDougall locates the national debates over the meaning, use, and organization of the telephone industry as a turning point in the history of information networks. The competing businesses represented dueling political philosophies: regional versus national identity and local versus centralized power. Although independent telephone companies did not win their fight with big business, they fundamentally changed the way telecommunications were conceived." -- Publisher's description.
Notes: Source title: The People's Network: The Political Economy of the Telephone in the Gilded Age (American Business, Politics, and Society)