The Internet and the End of the National Communication System: Uncertain Predictions of an Uncertain Future

Abstract

The Internet should be understood as the first instance of a global communication system. That system, in turn, is displacing a national system of communications which came into existence at the end of the nineteenth century as a result of the railroad and telegraph, and was “perfected” in subsequent innovations through television in the network era. Such transformations involve not only technical change but the complex alteration of physical, symbolic, and media ecologies which together will determine the impact of the medium.