This book provides a survey of what people said about technologies like electricity and telephony when they were very new. The author accomplishes this by quoting a lot of the popular and scientific magazines from the time. The result is a number of unusual applications of these technologies. It also reveals some interesting problems to be worked out when new technologies were applied (e.g. would a board meeting be valid when some members attended only via telephone).

The idea of the book is very clever and many of the stories are entertaining. Unfortunately, the style of the book is too much like a thesis that had been expanded into book form. It is, nevertheless, worth reading. ( )

Carolyn Marvin writes about the social aspects of 19th century electric communication -- telegraph, telephone, and electric light -- and turns over a few interesting stones along the way. She digs deep into the gendered and classed nature of "expert" culture, looks at the ways electric lighting changed the nature of the social gathering, and has some really great stuff to say on the ways that each generation constructs its own past as well as its own future. Her writing is dense but clear.

This book was written in the 1980s, which alternately made me wish for an updated edition and made me really revel in the 19th century fantasies that had come true since publication. Jules Verne would have really liked Skype. ( )