In the age of satellites and the Internet, worldwide communication has become increasingly unified amid overblown claims about the redemptive possibilities of international networks. But this rhetoric is hardly new. As Armand Mattelart demonstrates in Networking the World, 1794-2000, globalization and its attendant hype have existed since road and rail were the fastest way to move information.
Mattelart plates contemporary global communication networks into historical context and shows that the networking of the world began much earlier than many assume, in the late eighteenth century. He argues that the internationalization of communication was spawned by such Enlightenment ideals as universalism and liberalism, and exmines how the development of global communications has been inextricably linked to the industrial revolution, modern warfare, and the emergence of nationalism. Throughout, Mattelart eloquently argues that discourses of better living through globalization often mask projects of political, economic, and cultural domination.
Author(s): Armand Mattelart
Edition: 1
Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 160
Tags: Internet; Telecommunications; Networking & Cloud Computing;Computers & Technology;Networks;Networks, Protocols & APIs;Networking & Cloud Computing;Computers & Technology;Telecommunications & Sensors;Antennas;Microwaves;Mobile & Wireless;Networks;Radar;Radio;Remote Sensing & GIS;Satellite;Signal Processing;Telephone Systems;Television & Video;Engineering;Engineering & Transportation;History & Philosophy;Science & Math;Nanotechnology;Technology;Science & Math
Front Cover
Colophon
Contents
Preface
Chapter 1 - Networks of Universalization
The Torrent of Enlightenment
Freeing the Flow
Revolutionizing Language
Communicating with Signs
Standardization
The Outposts of Free Trade
International Division of Labor
The First Unified Area of Circulation
The Train, a Symbol of the Industrial Nation-State
The Worldwide Time of Managers
The Building of World Power
The Undersea Cable and the Pax Britannica
Sharing the Airwaves
War and Geopolitics
The Utopias of Universal Communication
Universal Association
The Determinism of Networks
The International Dimension of Social Networks
The Universal Expositions
The New Arcadias of Electricity
Chapter 2 - The Culture Factory
The Information Industry
Agents of News Value
Strategic Information
Toward the Industrialization of Culture
Early Genres of Mass Culture
Sound and Animated Images
The Nature of Publics
The Missionary Press
Necessary Interdependence
The World as a Giant Insurance Company
Uniformization of the Planet: Science-Fiction?
Chapter 3 - The Power of Propaganda
Management of Mass Opinion
An Information War
The Revelation of Propaganda
High Culture or Marketing?
The Inexorable Rise of the United States
The Power Base of Communication
The Specter of Hollywood
The First Wave of Advertising
Americanization or Crisis of Civilization?
Internationalization of the Air Waves
Chapter 4 - The Bipolar Geopolitics of Technology
Winning Hearts and Minds
The Conquest of Space
The Military-Industrial Complex
Intelsat
Integrating the Third World
Communication for Development
Revolt
Chapter 5 - Transnationalization and Geoeconomic Rationality
Toward the End of the Monopoly of Interstate Relations
Balance of Power and National Mediation
The Expansion of Advertising Networks
A Strategy of Institutional Resistance: French Cinema
The Flexibility of Magazines
The Awakening of Planetary Consciousness
Toward a New World Order of Information and Communication
Europe: The Reverse Side of Cultural Policies
The Challenge of Telematics
Toward a Global Society?
Chapter 6 - Globalization: The Networks of the Postnational Economy
Integrated World Capitalism
The Geofinancial Vanguard
A Corporate Philosophy
Standardization/Segmentation
The New Status of Communication
Economic Intelligence
The Legitimacy of Expertise
The Quest for the Single-Image Market
Communication Groups and Networks
From "Television without Frontiers" to the Cultural Exception
Information Highways
"Freedom of Commercial Speech"
From Democracy to the "Global Democratic Marketplace"
On the Global War
Information Dominance
Kosovo, or the Dark Side of Globalization
Chapter 7 - The Fracture: Toward a Critique of Globalism
A New Map of Inequality
World-Communication: The Tropism of Global Flows
Parasitic Networks
The Bondaries of Monoculture
Avoiding Manichaeanism
Vicissitudes of the Global Village
The Hybridization of Modernity in Question
An Anthropology of Contemporaneousness
Theory Put to the Test of Free Trade
A Clash of Civilizations?
Toward a New Democratic Cosmopolitanism
Global Causes
Toward an International Civil Society?
The Revolts against Globalism
The Split between Technology and Society
For a Critique of Global Newspeak
Conclusion
Selected Bibliography
About the Author and Translators
Back Cover
