Media, Information and Technoculture 2000F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: United States, Thomas Edison
1 Apr 2015
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Document Summary
Lagged systems(cid:224) postal service, fedex, etc. (not travelling: not just about speed instantaneously, arbitrary designation, social, cultural, political changes (henkin, not as important how fast things travel, but how they connect people together across different spaces and times, connections in temporal framework , postal service underappreciated, compared to rail, telegraph, reductive. Committed to circulating political news in the beginning rather than personal information: cheaper to send newspaper than to send letters at the time, receiver of the letter paid the bill not the sender, based on sheets, distance, getting mail was a special event, to mark the significance of the gesture, people of upper classes were the ones who were able to send and receive letters. If reduced to this low rate, there will be profit because many people will buy: some reforms enacted, 1839, increase in postal service use around the world, sparked worldwide reforms, took awhile to actually see the benefits but it did eventually occur.
