From Gutenberg to Google

It's easy to think that today's revolutions in communications, business, and many areas of daily life are unprecedented. The changes we experience nearly every day may be happening faster than those of the past, and on multiple fronts. But our ancestors at times were just as bewildered by rapid upheavals in what we now call "networks": the physical links that bind any society together.

In this fascinating book, Tom Wheeler vividly describes the two great network revolutions of the past and uses them to put in perspective the confusion, uncertainty, and excitement most people feel about changes happening now, changes that make up the third network revolution.

The first major network revolution was Gutenberg's invention of movable-type printing in the fifteenth century, which created the first mass-information economy. This book, its millions of predecessors, and history-shifting trends such as the Reformation, the Renaissance, and the scientific revolutions of the past 500 years would not have been possible without that one invention.

The second revolution came early in the nineteenth century with the inventions of the railroad and the telegraph. Never before had people been able to travel or communicate over long distances faster than a horse could gallop. Together, these two inventions compressed space and time, and in the process upended centuries of stability, transformed economies, and redrew the map of the world.

Wheeler contrasts these past revolutions with our experience today, when rapid-fire changes in networking are disrupting the nature of work, personal privacy, education, the media, and nearly every other aspect of modern life. The principal manifestation of this revolution-one that touches each of us directly and shapes both commerce and culture-is how we connect with each other. Our networks have always defined who we are, both economically and sociologically. Now, technology has delivered us into history's latest