Sublime communication technologies

"Communication technologies play a pivotal role in modern life Sublime Communication Technologies is a critical cultural history of communication technologies, form railways and telegraphy through photography, cinema, cars, radio, television and satellites to computers and the Internet. These technologies are sublime in the sense that they carry information to the earth and transform the solidities of pre-capitalist social formations into thin air." "This book develops new ways of thinking about communication and its technologies. It calls for a shift away from a mythology of technology involving command and control to one promoting commonality and community. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary and historical sources, it is the first book to assemble the scattered work of Walter Benjamin, Paul Virilio and Raymond Williams on communication and its technologies into a single, overall account."--Jacket.