Brief review of "The Invisible Weapon."

[Harry Shapiro <habs@Panix.Com>]

a conscious being, Eric Hughes wrote:
> 
> Harry Shapiro mentions what sounds like an excellent little book,
> titled "The Invisible Weapon"
> 
> I've made a directory called clipper/ in the ftp site.  I'm looking
> for information to fill it up with.
> 
> Harry, I'd like to publicly ask you to write an annotated bibliography
> entry for this book so that I could put it up.  Full reference
> details, of course, two or three sentences describing the contents of
> each chapter, and a small summary.  Thanks in advance.

Hope this is close enough:

The Invisible Weapon.

Telecommunications and International Politics (1851-1945)

By Daniel R. Headrick, Prof. of History and Social Sciences at
Roosevelt University, author of "The Tools of the Empire" and "The
Tentacles of Progress."

Copyright 1991 Oxford University Press, Inc.
ISBN: 0-19-506273-6
1. Telecommunications - History
2. Telecommunications - Political aspects - History
3. Telecommunications - Military aspects  - History
4. World Politics -- 1900 - 1945
5. World Politics -- 19th century

From the book jacket - 
"A vital instrument of power, telecommunications
is and always has been a profoundly political technology. In "The
Invisible Weapon," Headrick examines the political history of
telecommunications from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of world
war II, and illustrates how this technology gave nations a new
instrument for international relations.

Headrick's discusses the political aspects of information technology in
modern history. He shows how telegraphy created conflicts in far-flung
empires which hastened the deterioration of diplomacy on the brink
of the first world war; increased the political interest in controlling
news; and how the security of telecommunications made communications
strategy, communications intelligence, and cryptography decisive tools
during the two world wars."

This book is of interest to be because it details all of the positive
accepts of why a government "needs" to know everything that is
telecommunicated everywhere it can. Even more importantly is shows how
the British government routinely intercepted communications sent through
British owned telecommunications infrastructure despite publicly
claiming they would never do such a thing.

It also shows how interception "hastened the deterioration of
diplomacy."


The Chapters:

1. Telecommunications and International relations

2. The New Technology

3. The Expansion of the World Cable Network, 1866-1895

4. Telegraphy and Imperialism in the Late Nineteenth Century

5. Crisis at the Turn of the Century, 1895-1901

6. The Great Powers and the Cable Crisis, 1900-1913

7. The Beginnings of Radio, 1895 - 1914

8. Cables and Radio in World war I

9. Communications Intelligence in World War I

10. Conflicts and Settlements, 1919 - 1923

11. Technological Upheavals and Commercial Rivalries, 1924 - 1939

12. Communications Intelligence in World War II

13. The War at Sea

14. The Changing of the Guard

15. Telecommunications, Information, and Security

/harry