Crossed Wires
Dan Schiller
Abstract
Abstract The history of US telecommunications bears the stamp of a divided and dominative political economy. Beginning with the Post Office at the dawn of the republic, networks have constituted both enablers and pathways of US imperialism: today’s internet thus is only the latest and fullest incarnation of an “American system” for managing cross-border telecommunications. Second, business users of networks—more than carriers and, certainly, more than residential users—have repeatedly taken a pivotal role in telecommunications system development and policymaking. Network features, services, and rate structures have reflected business users’ preeminence. Third, despite their importance for virtually every sphere of social life, networks have been consecrated above all to aiding the circulation of commodities. Not social communication needs but marketing and the movement of commodities have held primacy in investment and policymaking. Finally, though often obscured and neglected, recurrent struggles by workers, consumers, and political radicals have helped shape the contour lines of US telecommunications history. Demands to alter structures of ownership and control; to expand access to service; to improve working conditions; and to pull networks out of the orbit of US imperial foreign policy have been notable features of this reform tradition. Drawing on primary sources held in many archives, as well as on a wide secondary historical scholarship, Crossed Wires documents the full sweep of US telecommunications across these four dimensions—from the Post Office to the internet two centuries later.