Overview

Let us not forget that the value of this great system does not lie primarily in its extent or even in its efficiency. . . . Its worth depends on the use that is made of it. . . . For the first time in human history we have available to us the ability to communicate simultaneously with millions of our fellow men, to furnish entertainment, instruction, widening vision of national problems and national events.

These words make a doubly appropriate introduction to a book about combining the first new medium of the twentieth century, radio, with the last, the Internet. They were spoken by Herbert Hoover, the then United States Secretary of Commerce, in 1924 about the uncertain beginnings of the technology by which humans learned to communicate with each other using radio waves (at the start of the third Washington Radio Conference). But they could equally be taken from one of the more restrained paeans of anticipation that greeted the emergence of the Internet into public consciousness almost exactly 70 years later.

In those early years on the frontier of wireless listening, the equipment was bulky and awkward to use, the sound quality was poor by today s standards and reception would often break up because, in America at least, too many people were trying to broadcast on the system at the same time: but nevertheless those who had receivers were captivated by the magic of the experience and of course the novelty. If we take out...