New Age of Communications

John Green's "The New Age of Communications (Scientific American Focus Book)" gives you a great overview of the telecommunications industry as it was and is it could be in the future. Short, but sweet, Green starts off with a description of life in the future as the average person has his/her own "Intelli-Agent" that helps us get through the day gathering all our information and helping us plan out our day. From there he takes you on a tour of technology as it developed (the radio, TV, telephone, personal computer, hypertext, Xanadu, Internet, multimedia development, gaming, etc.) to what is under current development (voice recognition, Intelligence Agents, Artificial Intelligence, etc) to what may develop in the future (complex Intelligence Agents, Virtual Reality, Smart Homes, etc) and gives some good background info on some of the major players in the development of the telecommunications industry and its study: Marshall McLuhan, Gordon Moore, Ted Nelson, Bill Gates, Steven Jobs, etc.In addition to giving an overview on how technology has developed, Green also addresses some of the "social issues" it has brought about including: hacking, privacy issues, cyber-crime, etc.Overall, though a diminutive 133 pages, this book is basically a great overview to technology in our society, where it has been, where it could go and some of the problems it addresses and also causes.Written and published in the mid-90s the book is still quite current though some of the "developing" technologies it addresses are almost out-of-date. The social issues it addresses and "future technologies to look forward to" still leave this book very relevant, even a good 6 years later.In addition, the book also includes a pretty useful "Timeline" which details when and by who technologies were developed, actually going back to the middle ages when the printing press was developed.This book was used as a supplementary text to a telecommunications course I took back in 1998. It's a great introduction to the field of study for anyone who is interested in learning more about it.Recommended