Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia

This text considers the ebb and flow of political power and authority as a function of changes in modes of communication. It examines the emergence of printing and its impact on the transformation of medieval to the modern order and then considers the impact of digital electronic communications.Interweaving media theory and historical analysis, this book explores the effect new digital-telecommunication technologies, which Deibert calls hypermedia, will have on the distribution of political power in the next century. Deibert tracks the transformation of Europe from the medieval to the modern and then turns to the hypermedia age, where new digital technologies such as the Internet, encryption, and high-resolution satellite imaging favor nonterritorial institutions and communities, shifting political authority and policymaking from individual nations to transnational corporations, global financial markets, and nongovernmental organizations and activists.