The soft edge : a natural history and future of the information revolution / Paul Levinson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Levinson, Paul.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Information technology--History.

Information technology.

Information technology--Forecasting.

Physical Description:

xviii, 257 p.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Routledge, 1998.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The Soft Edge is a one-of-a-kind history of the information revolution. In his lucid and direct style, Paul Levinson, historian and philosopher of media and communications, gives us more than just a history of information technologies. The Soft Edge is a book about theories on the evolution of technology, the effects that human choice has on this (r)evolution, and what's in store for us in the future. Paul Levinson's engaging voice guides us on a tour that explains how communications media have been responsible for major developments in history and for profound changes in our day-to-day lives. Levinson presents the intriguing argument that technology actually becomes more human. We see how information technologies are selected on the basis of how well they meet human needs. Why is email more like speech than print is? Why didn't the arrival of television destroy the radio? These and many more thought provoking questions are answered in The Soft Edge. Boldly extending and deepening the pathways blazed by McLuhan, Paul Levinson has provided us with a brilliant and exciting study of life with our old media, our new media, and the media still to come.

Contents:

The first digital medium

The printed authorship of the modern world

The age of photography and the ageless image

Telegraphy

Telephone

Electricity

Radio

Survival of the media fit

Remedial media

Word processing and its masters

The online author as publisher and bookstore

Hypertext and author/reader inversions

The open Web and its enemies

Twentieth-Century screens

Paper futures

Electronic watermarks

Artificial intelligence in real life

You can't touch that in cyberspace.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [233]-241) and index.

ISBN:

1-134-64193-1

1-134-64194-X

1-280-15081-5

9786610150816

0-203-98104-9

9780203981047

OCLC:

61248385