Explorations in Communication and History addresses the link between what we know and how we know it by tracking the intersection of communication and history. Asking how each discipline has enhanced and hindered our understanding of the other, the book considers what happens to what we know when disciplines engage.

A History of Communications advances a theory of media that explains the origins and impact of different forms of communication - speech, writing, print, electronic devices and the Internet - on human history in the long term. New media are 'pulled' into widespread use by broad historical trends and these media, once in widespread use, 'push' social institutions and beliefs in predictable directions. This view allows us to see for the first time what is truly new about the Internet, what is not, and where it is taking us.

Originally published in 1974. This is an introductory text on the basic processes in communication with each chapter written by an eminent theorist in one of the main disciplines dealing with communication. It both surveys the range of issues and presents the individual author’s personal theoretical approach in each case. Though introductory, the chapters here, while attempting to be representative and to avoid unnecessary jargon, are careful to not oversimplify. Each author presents an original thesis providing a first-hand glimpse of scholarly work in the discipline showing the great diversity among the approaches and levels of analysis used in the study of communication. Of great usefulness to students of psychology, language, linguistics, media and social history.

This text divides the history of American technical communication into three themes: the importance of visual communication (1791-1887); the power of genre (1791-1980); and the role of technical communicators as innovators within constraints (1948-1954).