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Zusatztext "There may be no better way to comprehend the deluge of daily information under which we exist than to turn the clock back to early America. Richard D Brown's analysis of information networks in New England and Tidewater Virginia provides the context that places our current information explosion in perspective. A professor of history at the University of Connecticut, Brown derives the bulk of his data from selected diaries, journals, and letters....The book is an immensely readable portrait of early Americans, the product of a writer in control of his material. it is a story of both the small and great, engaged in the formation and diffusion of information."Journalism Quarterly Klappentext Brown here explores America's first communications revolution--the revolution that made printed goods and public oratory widely available and, by means of the steamboat, railroad and telegraph, sharply accelerated the pace at which information travelled. He describes the day-to-dayexperiences of dozens of men and women, and in the process illuminates the social dimensions of this profound, far-reaching transformation. Brown begins in Massachusetts and Virginia in the early 18th century, when public information was the precious possession of the wealthy, learned, andpowerful, who used it to reinforce political order and cultural unity. Employing diaries and letters to trace how information moved through society during seven generations, he explains that by the Civil War era, cultural unity had become a thing of the past. Assisted by advanced technology and anexpanding economy, Americans had created a pluralistic information marketplace in which all forms of public communication--print, oratory, and public meetings--were competing for the attention of free men and women. Knowledge is Power provides fresh insights into the foundations of Americanpluralism and deepens our perspective on the character of public communications in the United States. Zusammenfassung One of the leading scholars dealing with early communication history in America, Richard Brown discusses how information moved through eighteenth and nineteenth-century American society, principally through the expansion of the printed word and its change from the property of the learned and wealthy into a mass-audience market....
