'Listen to the technology and find out what it is telling us'
- Carver Mead
California Institute of Technology


John May is the author, co-author, producer or editor of thirteen books including An Index of Possibilities, Worlds Within Worlds, the Greenpeace Book of Antarctica and The Book of Curious Facts.As a journalist, he has written for the New York Times, Sunday Times, Observer, Guardian, In dependent, Independent on Sunday and the Daily Telegraph.His articles have also been published in Esquire, the Face, Time Out, Wired and numerous specialist publications.For the last three years he has concentrated on writing about the digital revolution, mainly for Connected, the Telegraph's weekly digital supplement.



Editorial

'Man's making of the complex modern world is an appropriate subject for the twentieth-century historian. Creation of the material environment shaped by - and shaping- mankind is not a peripheral subject that can be left to narrow specialists. To direct attention today to technological affairs is to focus on a concern that is as central now as nation building and constitution making were a century ago. Technological affairs contain a rich mixture of technical matters, scientific laws, economic principles, political forces, and social concerns. The historian must take the broad perspective to get to the root of things and to see the patterns. Scientists and engineers analyse the technical systems they build, but historians are needed to comprehend the complex, multifaceted relations of these systems and the changes that take place in them over time.'
- Thomas P. Hughes

Networks of Power:Electrification in Western Society 1880-1930
[John Hopkins University Press. 1983]


This story really began for me when I bought Al Gore lunch in London on the eve of the Rio Earth Summit. It was Gore's article in Scientific American some time before that had triggered my interest in the forthcoming notion of the 'information highway.'

My first major piece on the subject, for the Telegraph magazine in September 1992, resulted in a flood of responses and some significant meetings which were to lead me further down the path to try and understand the nature and scale of the changes being wrought by the advance of digital technologies. It was clear then that this new 'industrial revolution' was being driven by a convergence between the computer chip, the fiber optic cable and the satellite. What wasn't clear then was the effect that the Internet was going to have, particularly through the establishment of the World Wide Web. Little did I think then that I would myself be building sites for this new medium. At that time it appeared that all these new changes had come more or less out of a clear blue sky. Producing this site over the last nine months has now given me a different model from which to view the rapid changes that are transforming our daily lives. It is clear that what we are living through is part of a longer story. The Internet, if you like, is the highest form of expression of the telegraph. The Victorians dreamed of many of the ideas that we have now made reality.

Reading these timelines, which are designed to give the general reader a broad overview of this vast and complex subject, I hope that you get some sense of the unfolding, evolutionary nature of the technological changes that have taken place over the last 200 years. I have tried to achieve something ambitious by merging the previously seperate histories of communications, computing and media. This is most fully realised in the 19th century section but it our aim, over the coming year, to expand, enrich and develop the existing site to the point where it becomes a major web resource. There is a great deal that is not in here yet. No mention of McLuhan and Murdoch, no detailed history of computer games or the Japanese electronics companies. Two new histories on television have yet to be digested and fed into the mix. It is missing the history of animation and special effects and has yet to keep up with the rapid changes of the 1990s. However we feel we have made a brave start and hope that you find the result useful and entertaining.

In a sense this is a story about fathers and sons. Al Gore's father was the architect of the Interstate Highways Bill that led to the building of the freeways which Jack Kerouac immortalised in On The Road. Network building runs in that family as it does in Peter Gabriel's, who told me his father worked for Ferranti in the 1950s and had a plan to build a cable tv system in Hastings, in southern England. Sons, in strange ways, fulfilling fathers' dreams.And so it is for me. This site is personally dedicated to my long lost father Ralph Whistler May - mason, organist and choirmaster, cinema projectionist and electrical engineer - who for many years, it seems, worked laying submarine telephone cables for Western Union from the West Coast of Ireland. I never knew him but his legacy - a passion for the subject of human communication - must have lived on in the genes.

It is also dedicated to a late lamented mentor John Chesterman, a kind of Richard Feynman in leather, who introduced a group of us to seminal influences like M.C. Escher, Buckminster Fuller, Alvin Toffler, Borges, relativity and much more, in his streetwise manner. JC, as we knew him, was a video and computer pioneer, an early adopter of Teletext who would have loved the latest developments on the Internet and deserves some kind of memorial on it.

It remains only to thank the hardworking team who have put so much time, energy and emotion into producing this site. In particular thanks go to my partners - Richard Quarrell and Gordon Adgey - without whose support and encouragement neither this site nor this writer would have survived. It is rare in the business world to find believers and risk takers who can see above and beyond the bottom line. Genetlemen, I salute your courage.

It is also vital to mention our sponsor Cable & Wireless in the form of Mary Godwin, a stylish and enlightened archivist and historian who has never been less than encouraging of our efforts and has made the whole operation fiancially possible.

Building this site has been a steep learning curve for us all. The Internet has been mutating in front of our eyes. None of us anticipated the problems of building a site on this scale and we have all been learning and relearning on the job.We look forward to your feedback, both critical and complimentary, and hope we can work together with many others to tell this wonderful story - surely the most powerful tale of the 20th century - in its full richness.

Watching over us all was the presence and spirit of Arthur C. Clarke. His inspiration has touched many of us over the years and we salute you, Sri Lankan sage, for your insight and wisdom and, above all, for your enthusiasms and your ability to communicate those to young minds.

This site is an original book on the web, itself a metaphor or symbol of the changing nature of communications and media in the last part of the 20th century. We look forward to the Millennium with interest.

John May
Lewes
15 April 1997

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