Victorian Internet

The idea embedded in the phrase is that instantaneous global communication is not a recent invention, but rather developed in the mid-19th century, and that the changes wrought by the telegraph outweigh the changes in modern society due to the internet. The ability to communicate globally at all in real-time is a qualitative shift, while the modern internet is merely a quantitative shift. The expression was used as a title of the book The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage[?].

The analogy between Victorian and electronic telecommunications technologies has also been made by Terry Pratchett in Discworld novels, where the optical telegraph system, the "clacks", and thus "c-commerce" is clearly a tongue-in-cheek reference to the internet.

External Links

• Tom Standage on the Victorian Internet (http://tomstandage.com/vicnet)