"An Introduction to the History of Communication: Evolutions and Revolutions provides a comprehensive overview of how human communication has changed and is changing. Focusing on the evolutions and revolutions of six key changes in the history of communication---becoming human; creating writing; developing print; capturing the image; harnessing electricity; and exploring cybernetics---the author reveals how communication was generated, stored, and shared. This ecological approach provides a comprehensive understanding of the key variables that underlie each of these great evolutions-revolutions in human communication. Designed as an introduction for history of communication classes, the text examines the past, attempting to identify the key dynamics of change in these human, technical, semiotic, social, political, economic, and cultural structures, in order to better understand the present and prepare for possible future developments."--BOOK JACKET.

This book is a comprehensive illustrated account of the technologies and inventions in mass communication that have accelerated the advancement of human culture and society. A History of Communication Technology covers a timeline in the history of mass communication that begins with human prehistory and extends all the way to the current digital age. Using rich, full-color graphics and diagrams, the book details the workings of various mass communication inventions, from paper-making, printing presses, photography, radio, TV, film, and video, to computers, digital devices, and the Internet. Readers are given insightful narratives on the social impact of these technologies, brief historical accounts of the inventors, and sidebars on the related technologies that enabled these inventions. This book is ideal for students in introductory mass communication, visual communication, and history of media courses, offering a highly approachable, graphic-oriented approach to the history of communication technologies.

A History of Communications advances a theory of media that explains the origins and impact of different forms of communication - speech, writing, print, electronic devices and the Internet - on human history in the long term. New media are 'pulled' into widespread use by broad historical trends and these media, once in widespread use, 'push' social institutions and beliefs in predictable directions. This view allows us to see for the first time what is truly new about the Internet, what is not, and where it is taking us.

This introduction to communication theory offers an historical account of the development of all major theoretical approaches by summing up the range of existing theories, and explaining how and why the diverse currents of thought emerged.

The Handbook of Communication History addresses central ideas, social practices, and media of communication as they have developed across time, cultures, and world geographical regions. It attends to both the varieties of communication in world history and the historical investigation of those forms in communication and media studies. The Handbook editors view communication as encompassing patterns, processes, and performances of social interaction, symbolic production, material exchange, institutional formation, social praxis, and discourse. As such, the history of communication cuts across social, cultural, intellectual, political, technological, institutional, and economic history. The volume examines the history of communication history; the history of ideas of communication; the history of communication media; and the history of the field of communication. Readers will explore the history of the object under consideration (relevant practices, media, and ideas), review its manifestations in different regions and cultures (comparative dimensions), and orient toward current thinking and historical research on the topic (current state of the field). As a whole, the volume gathers disparate strands of communication history into one volume, offering an accessible and panoramic view of the development of communication over time and geographical places, and providing a catalyst to further work in communication history.

The rise of the Information Age, the fall of the traditional media, and the bewildering explosion of personal information services are all connected to the historical chain of communications' revolutions. We need to understand these revolutions because they influence our present and future as much as any other trend in history. And we need to understand them not simply on a national basis - an unstable foundation for history in any event - but rather as part of the emergent global communications network. Unlike most of the current texts in the field, Revolutions in Communication is an up-to-date resource, expanding upon contemporary scholarship. It provides students and teachers with detailed sidebars about key figures, technical innovations, global trends, and social movements, as well as supplemental reading materials, and a fully supportive companion website. Revolutions in Communication is an authoritative introduction to the history of all branches of media.

Now in its 7th edition, Communication in History reveals how media has been influential in both maintaining social order and as powerful agents of change. Thirty-eight contributions from a wide range of voices offer instructors the opportunity to customize their courses while challenging students to build upon their own knowledge and skill sets. From stone-age symbols and early writing to the Internet and social media, readers are introduced to an expansive, intellectually enlivening study of the relationship between human history and communication media.