Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Highway of Dreams: A Critical View Along the Information Superhighway
ISBN: 9780203810873
Platform/Publisher: Taylor & Francis / Routledge
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Humanities; Media & Film Studies; Media & Communications;

This important volume reviews the history of the telecommunication superhighway pointing out its beginnings in the interactive TV and broadband highway of the wired cities more than two decades ago. It explains the technological uncertainties of the superhighway and many of its futuristic services, and also gives an understandable review of the technological principles behind today's modern telecommunication networks and systems.

Recognizing that technology is only one factor in shaping the future, the author, a well-recognized telecommunications expert, analyzes the financial, policy, business, and consumer issues that undermine the superhighway. The book concludes by showing that today's switched telephone network and CATV systems already form a telecommunication superhighway carrying voice, data, image, and video communication for a wide variety of services that enable us to stay in contact with anyone anywhere on our planet.

Highway of Dreams is written clearly with understandable explanations for nonspecialists. It challenges the technological utopia offered by the promoters of the superhighway and suggests that consumer needs, finance, corporate culture, and policy often have far greater impact on the future than technology alone.

He is a professor and former dean at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. Professor Noll is also a senior affiliated research fellow and director of technology research at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information at Columbia University and has authored eight other books about communication technologies and strategic critical business analysis.

050