The Victorian Internet

"The reason why I start with Tom Standage’s book is because we tend to think of the information age as something entirely new. In fact, people have been wrestling with information for many centuries. If I was going to say when the information age started, I would probably say the 15th century with the invention of the mechanical clock, which turned time into a measurable flow, and the printing press, which expanded our ability to tap into other kinds of thinking. The information age has been building ever since then. Standage covers one very important milestone in that story, which is the building of the telegraph system in the 19th century. The telegraph was the first really efficient system for long-distance, almost instantaneous communication. It’s a short book, a very lively read, and it shows how this ability to throw one’s thoughts across the world changed all aspects of society. It certainly changed the business world. Suddenly you could coordinate a business not just in a local area, but across the country or across oceans. It had a lot of social implications too, as people didn’t have to wait for letters to come over the course of days. And as Standage points out, it inspired a lot of the same hopes and concerns that we have today with the Internet. I’m not sure I agree with him there, in fact. The telegraph was the first time that humanity had to struggle with the implications of instantaneous long-distance communications, so it set the precedent for a lot of things that we have gone through since – not only the Internet but also radio, television and so forth. But ultimately there were limits to the telegraph. It was quite expensive, so it tended to be limited to high-priority messages, and because it was expensive they were very short. Only particular kinds of information could be exchanged efficiently through the telegraph. Certainly the Internet is a much broader information technology, and is having ultimately a greater effect than the telegraph did. This out-of-print book, about the introduction of the mechanical clock, is a fascinating story of the enormous effects that a new technology can have on society and the way that we think. It’s amazing just to think how recent in human history that breaking down of time into measurable units is. Landes dates the initial invention back to the 15th century. It emerged from monks, who needed to coordinate their schedule during the day because they wanted to have a rigorous timetable of prayer. They developed the mechanical clock so that they could break the day up to schedule precisely their devotions. This was a time in history when people were moving from a purely agricultural economy to an urban, more industrial economy. And when people congregate in mills and factories, suddenly they have to coordinate their activities in a way they never had to before. So this technology quickly spread across cities. Pretty soon every town had a clocktower, or a church or town hall with a clock, and people would synchronise their activities in all sorts of ways, both for work and leisure. In a way that is similar to computers today, the clock shrank to being a personal device – in your home, in your palm, on your wrist. And suddenly it began to regiment our lives in a way that was very different to when we measured time in a more natural, cyclical manner."