Author: Roland Barthes File Type: pdf ReviewIn Roland Barthes, the critic has at last turned toward himself as the text to be studied. The result is a highly unconventional autobiography (splendidly translated) which is brilliant and baffling by turns. The Washington PostLanguage NotesText English (translation)Original Language French

Author: Tom Standage File Type: pdf A new paperback edition of the first book by the bestselling author of A History of the World in 6 Glassesthe fascinating story of the telegraph, the worlds first Internet, which revolutionized the nineteenth century even more than the Internet has the twentieth and twenty first.The Victorian Internet tells the colorful story of the telegraphs creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it, from the eighteenth-century French scientist Jean-Antoine Nollet to Samuel F. B. Morse and Thomas Edison. The electric telegraph nullified distance and shrank the world quicker and further than ever before or since, and its story mirrors and predicts that of the Internet in numerous ways. Tom Standage is the former technology editor and current business editor at the Economist. He is the author of A History of the World in 6 Glasses, The Turk, and The Neptune File. The Victorian Internet tells thestory of the telegraph, the worlds first internet, which revolutionized the nineteenth century even more than the internet has the twentieth and twenty-first. The electric telegraph nullified distance and shrank the world quicker and further than any technologybefore or since, and its story mirrors and predicts that of the internet in numerous intriguingways. Tom Standage covers the creation of the telegraph and remarkable impact it had on communication and society. He writes about the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it, from the eighteenth-century French scientist Jean-Antoine Nollet to Samuel F. B. Morse and Thomas Edison. By 1865, telegraph cables spanned continents and oceans, revolutionizing the ways countries dealt with one another. The new technology gave rise to creative business practices and new forms of crime. Romances blossomed over the wires. Secret codes were devised by some and cracked by others. The benefits of the network were relentlessly hyped by advocates and vehemently dismissed by skeptics. Government regulators tried and failed to control the new medium. Attitudes toward everything from news gathering to war had to be reconsidered. Meanwhile, on the wires, a technological subculture with its own customs and vocabulary was establishing itself. As globalization continues to makes the world seem smaller, The Victorian Internet reflects on what was the greatest revolution in communication since the invention of the printing press. The telegraph took that initial step toward connectedness across geographical, economical and social distances. With every new technology, we overestimate how quickly people change their behavior. This dot-com cult classic compares Web fever to the awe of the telegraph. When Queen Victoria sent the first transatlantic cable to President Buchanan in 1858, the London Times said that the invention has half undone the Revolution of 1776, and torch-bearing revelers, celebrating the cables completion, nearly burned down New Yorks City Hall. Publisher James Gordon Bennett rued Mere newspapers must submit to destiny and go out of existence. What was the best way to profit? Faster communications created our Information Age, but the telegraph industry was a short-lived wonder. By 1880, Western Union carried 80% of the traffic. Then came the phone.L. Gordon Crovitz, The Wall Street JournalStandage has written a lively book on the telegraph and its roles in helping 19th century business and technology grow . . . The Victorian Internet demonstrates engagingly that not even the 21st century technology is totally new.Denver Post[The telegraphs] capacity to convey large amounts of information over vast distances with unprecedented dispatch was an irresistible form, causing what can only be called global revolution.Washington PostAn entertaining primer on a complex subject of increasing interest.Los Angeles Times Sunday Book ReviewOne of the most fascinating books of the dotcom era . . . Standage is a good storyteller, and provides an engaging account of the rise and fall of the telegraph.The Financial TimesBlends anecdote, suspense and science into richly readable stuff.The IndependentA fascinating walk through a pivotal period in human history.USA TodayStandage tells his fascinating story in an engaging, readable style, from the moment a bunch of Carthusian monks get suckered into a hilarious human electrical-conductivity experiment in 1746 to the telegraphs eventual eclipse by the telephone. If youve ever hankered for a perspective on media Net hype, this book is for you.Hari Kunzru, WiredRichly detailed . . . Standages writing is colourful, smooth and wonderfully engaging.Smithsonian magazineA new technology will connect everyone! Its making investors rich! Its the Internet boomexcept Samuel Morse is there!Fortune magazineThis book should be essential reading for those caught up in our own information revolution.Christian Science MonitorI was simply fascinated by this book. It contains parallels between the reception of the telegraph and the Internet which I knew nothing about.Vinton Cerf, co-inventor of the InternetAn inspired and utterly topical rediscovery of the emergence of the earliest modern communications technology.William Gibson, author of All Tomorrows PartiesA great read . . . The book makes the argument that the telegraph in its day was much more revolutionary than the internet is in our day.Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia.orgAn admirably efficient and concise telling of the story of the rise and decline of the telegraph. As with all good case histories, this one excites the mind with parallels to present day experience.Henry Petroski, author of The Pencil A History of Design and CircunstanceAn almost unputdownable account of a technical revolution of a magnitude and impact that in many ways arguably was larger than that of the Internet . . .a useful and very rewarding. . . reading for anyone.Dr. Henrik Nilsson, University of NottinghamA lively, short history of the development and rapid growth a century and a half ago of the first electronic network, the telegraphs, Standages book debut is also a cautionary tale in how new technologies inspire unrealistic hopes for universal understanding and peace, and then are themselves blamed when those hopes are disappointed.Publishers WeeklyA fascinating overview of a once world-shaking invention and its impact on society. recommended to fans of scientific history.Kirkus ReviewsThis lively, anecdote-filled history reveals that the telegraph changed the world foreverfrom the hand-carried-message world to an instantaneous one . . . Standage has it all here, including the role the telegraph played in war (Crimea), spying (the Dreyfus affair, in which Captain Dreyfus was first betrayed and then saved by a telegram), and even love (sort of the first chat rooms, to use an Internet term).Booklist

Author: Terese Svoboda File Type: epub [test]

Author: Ian Christie File Type: pdf This is the first collection to be inspired and informed by the new films and archival material that glasnost and perestroika have revealed, and the new methodological approaches that are developing in tandem. Film critics and historians from Britain, America, France and the USSR attempt the vital task of scrutinising Soviet film, and re-examining the Cold War assumptions of traditional historiography.Whereas most books on Soviet giants have glorified the directorial giants of the `golden age of the 1920s, Inside the Film Factory also recognises the achievements of popular cinema from the pre-Revolutionary period through to the 1930s and beyond. It also evaluates the impact of Western cinema on the early experimenters of montage, Russian science fictions influence on film-making, and the long-suppressed history of Soviet Yiddish productions. Alongside the new perspectives and source material on the much-mythologised figures of Kuleshov and Medvedkin, the book provides the first extended accounts in English of the important but neglected careers of directors Yakov Protazanov and Boris Barnet.Review`It is a valiant and long-overdue project.