The telegraph and telephone, like more contemporary forms of telepresence, such as live television and video conferencing, produce synchronous, location-independent communication.
Such forms of telepresence have the virtue of immediacy-via-simulated-presence. What do such forms of communication lose?
What is the fundamental difference between telegraphy and telephony? Was this difference at first understood?
In what ways is the telephone better than television or a video-telephone beloved of science-fiction writers? In what ways is it worse? (How does one define better or worse?)
In what fundamental way does these analogue forms of information technology differ from digitally based electronic ones? Or, what happens when we electronify the book?
Last updated: 20 July 2002