| PART I COMMUNICATIONS AND THE CHANGING ENVIRONMENT | |
| 1. From Mass Media Revolution to Electronic Revolution | 3 |
| The Example of the Printing Press | 3 |
| The Era of Digital Communication | 7 |
| Information and the Second Industrial Revolution | 10 |
| The Consequences | 13 |
| 2. The New Communications Technologies | 19 |
| Defining a Communication System | 19 |
| Digital versus Analog Signals | 20 |
| Transmission Media | 23 |
| Spectrum | 28 |
| Satellites | 29 |
| Computer Message Processing | 32 |
| 3. Crumbling Walls of Distance | 34 |
| Instantaneous Communication | 35 |
| Wireless Transmission | 37 |
| 4. Limits to Growth 40 | |
| Spectrum: A Finite Resource? | 40 |
| Programming | 48 |
| 5. Talking and Thinking among People and Machines | 50 |
| The Concept of Computer | 51 |
| Computers and Communication | 56 |
| Interactive and Individualized Communication | 59 |
| PART II SATELLITES, COMPUTERS, AND GLOBAL RELATIONS | |
| 6. Communities without Boundaries | 65 |
| The Spatial Reorganization of Activity | 67 |
| The Global Flow of Mass Media | 71 |
| Person-to-Person Networks | 83 |
| International Information Retrieval Systems | 88 |
| 7. Regulating International Communication | 101 |
| Restrictions on Free Flow | 101 |
| The Protectionist Case | 109 |
| Charges of Cultural Imperialism from the Left and Right | 121 |
| Why American Television Succeeds Abroad | 126 |
| The Fallacies of Protection | 129 |
| The Diffusion of Centers of Activity | 137 |
| The Theory of Comparative Advantage | 144 |
| 8. Broadcasting from Satellites to Home Receivers: A Case Study | 149 |
| Direct versus Redistribution Broadcasting | 153 |
| Frequencies and Orbital Locations | 155 |
| Cooperative versus Unwanted Broadcasts | 161 |
| The American, Soviet, and Third-World Positions | 163 |
| 9. Communications for the Less Developed Countries | 167 |
| Do Poor Countries Need State-of-the-Art Technology? | 170 |
| A Four-Media Communications System | 178 |
| "Development Communication" versus Infrastructure | 180 |
| Organizing at the Grass Roots | 189 |
| Development Is Two-Way Communication | 193 |
| Managing the Communications Resource | 195 |
| Fostering Development in an Electronic Age | 201 |
| 10. Advanced Communications and World Leadership | 205 |
| Telecommunications and the Projection of National Power | 205 |
| Export of Telecommunications Hardware | 207 |
| Facilitation of World Trade | 208 |
| Trade in Knowledge | 209 |
| International Pressures on Communications Policies | 209 |
| The American Role | 214 |
| PART III ECOLOGY, CULTURE, AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY | |
| 11. The Ecological Impact of Telecommunications | 219 |
| Communication and the Pattern of Urban Settlement | 220 |
| The CommunicationslTransportation Tradeoff | 224 |
| Megalopolis | 229 |
| Communications, an Abundant Resource | 236 |
| 12. Technology and Culture | 239 |
| Interaction and Diversity | 240 |
| The Future of the Book | 248 |
| Copyright | 254 |
| Some Recapitulations | 259 |
| Notes | 263 |
| Index | 279 |