This document discusses the history of media and technology from the 18th century to the early 20th century. It explores the development of transportation through steam power, the growth of science and technology, Karl Marx's views on class struggle and machinery, the rise of the novel and mass publishing, and the formation of mass society and the mutual influence between opinion leaders and the public.

1. “A Social History of the Media” Asa Briggs & Peter Burke

2. “Our age is eminently mechanical. We travel from one place to another at relatively monstrous speeds; we speak to eachother over great distances, and we fight our enemies with amazing efficiency- all by the aid of mechanical contrivances.” -William Shockley, 1927

3. Energy & Patents

4. 1769

5. “The substitution of mechanical devices for human skills” [and the replacement of] “human and animal strength by inanimate power.” -David Landes

6. Transportation

7. “Soon shall they arm, UNCONQUER’D STEAM! afar Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car; Or wide-waving wings expanded bear They flying chariot through the fields of air.” -Erasmus Darwin, 1789

8. 1803

9. Science & Technology

10. “…those to whom the harmonious doors Of Science have unbarred celestial shores, To whom a burning energy has given That other eye which darts thro earth and heaven” -William Wordsworth ‘An Evening Walk’

11. Karl Marx

12. “…revolution would come not through technology itself but through class struggle between the capitalists who owned and controlled steam engines and machinery and the exploted industrial proletariat who worked them.” (91)

13. “Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs… etc. These are products of human industry: natural material transformed into instruments of the human will.” (91)

14. Publishing

15. the novel

16. Geopolitics

17. “…different sequences of communications development have related to each other in different cultures.” (95)

18. Mass Society

19. “The mutual action and reaction of the makers or leaders of opinion upon the mass, and of the mass upon them was the most curious part of the whole process by which the formation of opinion is produced.” -James Bryce, 1900