The most effective way to demonstrate a parallelism is to describe the unfamiliar in such a way that its similarity to the familiar is obvious. Standage's short but effective history of the telegraph's initial period of rapid growth resonates with today's reader. Only in his concluding two-page epilogue does he feel the need to explicitly draw a parallel between the telegraph and the Internet. Outside of the current fascination with the Internet economy, this is still a fascinating and thought-provoking book. The quantum change in human communication capabilities was the first utilization of electricity and wire--everything since then has been a refinement. Learning that a young Tom Edison lived on huge amounts of weak coffee and apple pie, its easy for the reader to envision him as an early hacker, endangering his health with the 19th century equivalent of Jolt Cola and Twinkies. This book is equally enjoyable to anyone who enjoys the history of technology, and those who have a more specific interest in the Internet and want to learn what lessons a historical high-tech boom can offer. A quick & enjoyable read. I accept the author's contention that 1) the Internet today parallels the 19th c. telegraph network, 2) the telegraph represented a significantly more dramatic change. ( )

Imagine a new technology that allows people to communicate instantly over vast distances. It revolutionizes business practices, gives rise to new forms of crime and inundates its users with a deluge of information. Online romances blossom, governments try and fail to regulate its use. The benefits of this new technology are relentlessly hyped by its advocates and dismissed by skeptics.

Of course we must be talking about the internet, right? Nope, it's the telegraph. Known to the Victorians as the 'Highway of Thought', it shrank their world to a degree that was both bewildering and revolutionary. The author argues convincingly that the rate of change experienced by the Victorians was far more intense and dramatic than are the technological advances we are experiencing today.

This book traces the development of the telegraph from early experiments in the mid-1700's, through slow and painful early trials, to its explosive growth in the Victorian era.

The story is both fascinating and humbling. ( )

I finished this little book in three days. An intriguing look at the history of the telegraph, from it's beginnings in Europe until it's ultimate demise at the arrival of the teletype. The author also draws comparisons with the telegraph and the internet, with it's changes in how people communicate, it's sub-cultures and it's hackers and crackers. Nothing new in the world. ( )

In the middle of the 19th century, the Victorians didn't have the telephone, the TV, the radio or the iPod. But they did have an internet. The Victorian Internet is the fascinating story of the development, growth, and decline of the telegraph, and how it parallels the development of the internet in the 20th and 21st centuries in many ways. If you think socializing online is new, think again. Those bewhiskered and corseted Victorians were already at it in the 1860s! ( )

One of my favorite books. Draws some very interesting parallels between the development of the Internet in the late20th and early 21st centuries and the development of the telegraph in the mid-19th century. ( )