What can History Tell Us About the Future of the Internet?
Speaker: Tom Standage, Deputy Editor, The Economist
The internet is not the first example of a world-wide communications network; nor are today's online social-media platforms the first media-sharing ecosystems. In this event Tom Standage, a journalist and author who has written books about both the history of the telegraph ("The Victorian Internet") and the 2,000-year history of social media ("Writing on the Wall"), will explain why he takes a particular interest in the antecedents of the internet, from papyrus scrolls to coffeehouses to pneumatic tubes, and assess what history can tell us about the internet's future.
Recorded: 20 May 2015.
Speaker: Tom Standage, Deputy Editor, The Economist
The internet is not the first example of a world-wide communications network; nor are today’s online social-media platforms the first media-sharing ecosystems. In this event Tom Standage, a journalist and author who has written books about both the history of the telegraph (“The Victorian Internet”) and the 2,000-year history of social media (“Writing on the Wall”), will explain why he takes a particular interest in the antecedents of the internet, from papyrus scrolls to coffeehouses to pneumatic tubes, and assess what history can tell us about the internet’s future.
Recorded: 20 May 2015.
