Footnotes
- For an overview of the process of fiber-optic network installation, see Andrew Kupfer, "The Race to Rewire America," Fortune, April 19, 1993, 42-61. The converging futures of computer networks, cable TV networks, and telephone networks are explored in detail in Gary Stix, "Domesticating Cyberspace," Scientific American 269: 2 (August 1993): 100-10. [to text]
- Development of the worldwide telecommunications infrastructure began in 1837, when the telegraph was demonstrated and patented. The telephone followed in 1876. Long-distance telegraph and telephone networks had developed by the dawn of the twentieth century, and the technology of wireless telegraphy was emerging. By the 1950s extensive analog telecommunications networks employed wire, cable, and microwave links together with crossbar switching technology. In the 1960s digital telecommunications systems began to supplant the older analog ones, and the first communications satellites were put into service. Fiber-optic cables and ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) lines became increasingly commonplace in the 1980s. By mid-1994 the local cable television company was providing me with direct access to the Internet computer network from my home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and it was clear that existing, largely separate, telephone, radio, television, and data networks would eventually evolve into a worldwide, broadband, digital service. Politicians and journalists began to talk about the emergence of an Information Superhighway system. [to text]
- Cable links are mostly underground and in building walls, wireless links are completely invisible, and most installations of digital telecommunications equipment are small and inconspicuous. [to text]
