Newsletter of the Mercurians, in the Society for the History of Technology
Volume 11 No. 1, Nov. 1998
Session Planning: 1999 and 2000
Robert Arns Awarded IEEE Prize
Toward a History of Information Systems
Misreading the Supreme Court: A Puzzling Chapter in the History of Radio
Access Denied: The Beginning and End of the Information Society
Book Review
Universal Service
Access Denied:
The Beginning and End of the Information Society
The Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds, held a conference this September in which an international range of speakers addressed "how all is not well in the information age." While some papers focused on the reality of unequal access to information technology, other highlighted potentials to help bring about change and whether those potentials are likely to be realized.
Historians of communication technologies are well aware that as the technological possibilities become ever greater, the problems of old remain. Readers of this newsletter may find the discussions of this conference interesting as they debated questions such as: Are the claims for a new information society now discredited? Did they ever have any validity? Why should the new communications technologies create a different society from the old ones?
Details on this conference and its participants can be found at <www.leeds.ac.uk/ics/informed.htm>. Information on earlier conferences and other activities of the Institute of Communications Studies can also be found there. The Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT. Tel: 0113 233 5817 Fax 0113 233 5820 <informed@leeds.ac.uk>