Windows on the World

摘要

Cheap, quick, global communications and information access are recognized as necessities the world over. This is not new. The electric telegraph made next-day newspaper coverage of American Civil War battles routine in the 1860s. Clipper ships, railroads, photography, steamships, the telephone, communications and broadcast radio, automobiles, roadway express by truck, air travel, wire photos, television, satellite communications, ARPANet, cheap G2 and G3 fax, and cellular telephony were all paving stones in the road to cheaper, faster, and more varied communication over ever-longer distances. And most of them are still with us -supplemented and redefined, but not replaced, by the technologies that followed.