Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been implicated in the structuring and restructuring of human social relations since the days of cave paintings and fire signals. The development of the electrical telegraph and the telephone in the late 1800s marked a qualitative shift in the scope and power of ICTs, however. The new electrical communication systems brought disparate regions and peoples into an unprecedented, increasingly synchronous global network of information, trade, finance, and culture. In the 20th century, the emerging global telecommunication infrastructure was extended and its uses expanded by the development of radio transmission, satellite communications, and terrestrial broadband networks. More recently, digital encoding, storage, and transmission have allowed for data compression and the convergence of multiple formats into a common digital stream, further accelerating the speed and volume of global information and communication flows. At the same time, the diffusion of inexpensive personal computers, the development of the graphical user interface, and the establishment of common data exchange protocols have given users around the world direct access to an increasing mass of data, text, and multimedia documents-as well as the power to create and distribute such documents themselves.
The integration and interdependence of global media and information systems have created new challenges and new opportunities.
