Includes bibliographical references and index.

Media of early civilization. The earliest precursors of writing / Denise Schmandt-Besserat -- Media in ancient civilization / Harold Innis -- Civilization without writing : the Incas and the Quipu / Marcia Ascher and Robert Ascher -- The origins of writing / Andrew Robinson -- The tradition of Western literacy. The Greek legacy / Eric Havelock -- Writing and the alphabet effect / Robert K. Logan -- Orality, literacy, and modern media / Walter Ong -- Communication and faith in the Middle Ages / James Burke and Robert Ornstein -- The print revolution. Paper and block printing : from China to Europe / Thomas F. Carter -- The invention of printing / Lewis Mumford -- Aspects of the printing revolution / Elizabeth Eisenstein -- Early modern literacies / Harvey J. Graff -- The trade in news / John B. Thompson -- Electricity creates the wired world. Telegraphy : the Victorian Internet / Tom Standage -- The new journalism / Michael Schudson -- The telephone takes command / Claude S. Fisher -- Time, space, and the telegraph / James W. Carey -- Image technologies and the emergence of mass society. Dream worlds of consumption / Rosalynd Williams -- Early photojournalism / Ulrich Keller -- Inscribing sound / Lisa Gitelman -- The making of the phonograph / Jonathan Sterne -- Early motion pictures / Daniel Czitrom -- Movies talk / Scott Eyman -- Mass media and the star system / Jib Fowles -- Radio days. Wireless world / Stephen Kern -- The public voice of radio / John Durham Peters -- Early radio / Susan J. Douglas -- The golden age of programming / Christopher Sterling and John M. Kittross -- Radio voices / Michele Hilmes -- Radio in the television age / Peter Fornatale and Joshua E. Mills -- TV times. Television begins / William Boddy -- The new languages / Edmund Carpenter -- Making room for TV / Lynn Spigel -- Television transforms the news / Mitchell Stephens -- Two cultures : television versus print / Neil Postman and Camille Paglia -- TV in the net-age / Henry Jenkins -- New media and old in the information age. The control revolution / James Beniger -- How media became new / Lev Manovich -- Popularizing the Internet / Janet Abbate -- The World Wide Web / Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin -- A mobile network society / Manuel Castells, [et al.].