Networking the World, 1794-2000

Description

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. 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