Telecommunications History/Policy

This bibliography on telecommunication history and policy is organized with a global perspective as the fundamental concept for understanding the past, present, and future of telecommunication issues. Placing the global first and foremost is shaped by contemporary conditions. Nation-state and regional actions and analyses remain extremely important, and often run against the grain, wittingly or unwittingly, of global trajectories and concepts. Indeed, through the latter half of the 19th century and for much of the 20th century, the actions, decisions, and policies of nations and empires tell us more about the history of telecommunication than do global-level actions, decisions, and policies. Yet from the start, telecommunication was always a potentially borderless process, a series of theories and practices that could be and often were construed as global—even if that global vision was little more than a future fantasy for many theorists and practitioners. The visions of the past and the realities of the present argue in favor of a global continuity, a globalization now realized, as a central organizational schema for understanding telecommunication history and policy. Finally, the centrality of a global approach is likely to be thematically and organizationally sustainable for future research and scholarship regarding telecommunication history and telecommunication policy.