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Communications

Communication became unimaginably easier and faster. Since the first primitive crystal radio developed by Guglielmo Marconi at the start of the century was replaced by valve sets in the 1930s, the ability to communicate by radio increased rapidly. Telephones also spread quickly. By 1910, there were about 9 million in the United States alone.

Art of the telephone: 1930s

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Controlling information

But the real explosion in communications began after World War II, when the marketing of numerous technological breakthroughs – from television to mobile phones, and from transistor radios to the internet – changed the ability and speed of communication for most of the population of the West. By 1994, 99% of British homes had a television. Even less developed countries saw a massive increase in the ownership of various means of communication.

Space satellites, beginning with the Soviet Sputnik in 1957, were soon being used for communications. This meant that repressive states found it much harder to control the information available to their populations. The people of Communist East Germany, for example, could easily watch West German programmes on their televisions.

Storage and stress

From the late 1970s, the development of fibre-optic cables further increased the speed and volume of telephone and computer communication. Developments in miniaturisation, and the exploitation of the silicon microchip, meant that, by the 1990s, more messages and more information were being sent and stored than ever before. The number of people with internet access rose to about 130 million in 1998, nearly half of them in the US.

But increased information storage has also led to questions about civil liberties and accountability. The idea of Big Brother, derived from George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eight-Four, remains a relevant warning of the misuse of surveillance. New high-tech methods were also used in the workplace as a means of controlling workforces and making people work harder. Stress-related illnesses resulted.

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