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Two people calling on AT&T PicturePhone.

A Prehistory of Zoom

Concerns about privacy and pressures regarding the physical appearance of women and their homes contributed to the failure of AT&T’s 1960s Picturephone.
by Livia Gershon, Hannah Spaulding via JSTOR Daily on June 29, 2024
Man and woman testing buttons on machine at Duke University Parapsychology Laboratory

Tomorrow People

For the entire 20th century, it had felt like telepathy was just around the corner. Why is that especially true now?
by Roger Luckhurst via Aeon on June 3, 2024
Pneumatic tube station

Something Old, Something Pneu

Pneumatic tubes offered a leap forward in business and communications, in the office and across the city.
by Katrina Gulliver, Day Allen Willey via JSTOR Daily on January 6, 2024
Black and white photos of news paper headlines about computers.

When the Mac 'Ruined' Writing

Quills were once the default writing tool, when pens rose to prominence their impact on writing would be a hot debate in the literary world, and now computers.
by Louis Anslow via Newart on September 19, 2023
Banksy's Spy Booth depicting 3 spies listening in to a phone booth.

How the Drug War Convinced America to Wiretap the Digital Revolution

How the FBI's doomed attempt to stop criminal activity conducted via mobile phones shaped the regime of ubiquitous backdoor surveillance under which we live today.
by Brian Hochman via Humanities on January 6, 2023
Old computer with its mouse over the AOL logo.

America Online: A Cautionary Tale

On the rise and fall of the quintessential ’90s online service provider—and a warning about today’s social-media giants.
by Joanne McNeil via The Nation on December 15, 2022
A picture of switchboard operators.

Intimacy at a Distance

Hannah Zeavin’s history of remote and distance psychotherapy asks us whether the medium matters more than the message.
by Danielle Carr via The Nation on June 14, 2022
Black and white image of Arlington radio towers

When Arlington Set the Nation's Clocks: The Arlington Radio Towers

A century ago, Arlington was home to one of the most powerful radio stations in history, which helped to usher in an era of wireless communications.
by Henry Kokkeler via Boundary Stones on May 23, 2022
Abstract illustration of life working remotely.

The Perpetual Disappointment of Remote Work

What the troubled history of telecommuting tells us about its future.
by Richard Cooke via The New Republic on January 4, 2021
A drawing of two diamonds

Last Pole

The author goes looking for the history of telecommunication, and is left sitting in the slim shadow of a lightning rod, listening to a voice from beyond the grave.
by Julian Chehirian via The Public Domain Review on May 27, 2020
multicolor illustration of Gmail icons, iMessage text boxes, reply arrows, and refresh arrows.

Was E-mail a Mistake?

Digital messaging was supposed to make our work lives easier and more efficient, but the math suggests that meetings might be better.
by Cal Newport via The New Yorker on August 6, 2019

Simply Elegant, Morse Code Marks 175 Years and Counting

The code has undergone minor changes since its creation, but its use persists to this day.
by Eddie King via The Conversation on May 21, 2019
The Interface Message Processor that connected UCLA to ARPANET.

Communication Revolution

ARPANET and the development of the internet, 50 years later.
by Zoë Jackson via Perspectives on History on May 14, 2019

What War of the Worlds Did

The uncanny realism of Orson Welles’s radio play crystallised a fear of communication technology that haunts us today.
by Benjamin Naddaff-Hafrey via Aeon on November 26, 2018
Telephone from 1896

Want to Guess When the First Telephone Appeared in Literature?

It's probably further back than you think.
by Mark Lasswell via Weekly Standard on December 21, 2017

The Fake-News Fallacy

Old fights about radio have lessons for new fights about the Internet.
by Adrian Chen via The New Yorker on September 4, 2017
The logout screen for "The Cave," the author's 1990s-era bulletin board system.

The Lost Civilization of Dial-Up Bulletin Board Systems

A former systems operator logs back in to the original computer-based social network.
by Benj Edwards via The Atlantic on November 4, 2016
Map of the transatlantic cable.

The New World Order

The 1850s were a turning point for globalization, from telegraphs to colonization.
by Matthew Karp via Boston Review on September 2, 2016
Graphic illustration of people standing in a line with text boxes over their heads

Internet Privacy, Funded By Spies

Spies, counterinsurgency campaigns, hippie entrepreneurs, privacy apps funded by the CIA.
by Yasha Levine via Surveillance Valley on March 3, 2016
National Security Agency headquarters.

They Know Much More Than You Think

US intelligence agencies seem to have adopted Orwell’s idea of doublethink—“to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies.”
by James Bamford via New York Review of Books on August 15, 2013
Binary information.

A Brief History of Character Codes

Character codes have been evolving through multiple systems over multiple centuries, this is the story.
by Steven J. Searle via TRON Web on August 6, 2004

The New Talking Machines

A noted architect commends Thomas Edison for his progress in developing the phonograph and predicts great things for its future.
by Philip G Hubert via The Atlantic on February 1, 1889
Neil Postman in front of a collage of the cover of "Amusing Ourselves to Death."

The One Book That Explains Our Current Era Was Written 40 Years Ago

NYT pundits and NBA writers alike can't stop recommending this four-decade-old book.
by Laura J. Miller via Slate on March 25, 2025
Cover of The Moving Image by Peter Kaufman.

The Power of the Moving Image

Video has become our dominant cultural medium, yet we lack reliable archives for the audiovisual record.
by Peter B. Kaufman via Los Angeles Review of Books on February 11, 2025
Scene from "Smokey and the Bandit" of Burt Reynolds talking on a CB radio.

"A Long Way to Go and a Short Time to Get There"

In the 1970s, trucker films like "Smokey and the Bandit" celebrated rebellious, working-class solidarity and freedom, with complex politics at play.
by Adrian Daub via Dreams in the Which House on November 3, 2024
The newsroom of the Mobile Press-Register, ca. 1982.

Journalists and the “Origin Story” of Working from Home

Journalists helped to pioneer what would eventually result in our mobile world.
by Will Mari, Juliette De Maeyer via The Saturday Evening Post on October 14, 2024
A computer, business documents, envelope, and a broadcast tower.

How Tech Giants Make History

AT&T’s early leaders used PR to sway public opinion, casting their monopoly as a public service and obscuring its political roots.
by Richard R. John via Pro-Market on October 10, 2024
Cover of the 1973 report "Computers, Records, and the Rights of Citizens."

60 Years Ago, Congress Warned Us About the Surveillance State. What Happened?

The same legal and cultural struggles will await the next critical infrastructural technology, and the next.
by Jennifer Holt via The MIT Press Reader on September 27, 2024
Victorian telegraph operator.

What Mark Zuckerberg Should Learn From 19th-Century Telegraph Operators

No, really.
by Megan Ward via Slate on May 27, 2024
A group of men in a mailroom pose next to tube equipment

When a Labyrinth of Pneumatic Tubes Shuttled Mail Beneath the Streets of New York City

Powered by compressed air, the system transported millions of letters between 1897 and 1953.
by Vanessa Armstrong via Smithsonian on December 22, 2023
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