Hello readers - a short post to let you know that my first sole-authored book, Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications, is out now with MIT Press. You can find a link to the book’s webpage here. The book’s available to purchase now, and should be available for free, open-access download soon.
Update (08/02/2024): Download the book now here: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/14210.001.0001
Chapter 2 of the book explores telecom futurology in detail, but visions and expectations about the UK’s digital future from the 1960s to the 1990s feature throughout.
Here’s the book’s blurb:
Why the privatization of British Telecom signaled a pivotal moment in the rise of neoliberalism, and how it was shaped by the longer development and digitalization of Britain's telecommunications infrastructure.
When Margaret Thatcher sold British Telecom for £3.6 billion in 1984, it became not only, at the time, the largest stock flotation in history, but also a watershed moment in the rise of neoliberalism and deregulation. In Visions of a Digital Nation, Jacob Ward offers an incisive interdisciplinary perspective on how technology prefigured this pivot. Giving due consideration to the politicians, engineers, and managers who paved the way for this historic moment, Ward illustrates how the decision validated the privatization of public utilities and tied digital technology to free market rationales.
In this examination of the national and, at times, global history of technology, Ward's approach is sweeping. Utilizing infrastructure studies, environmental history, and urban and local history, Ward explores Britain's nationalist and welfarist plans for a digital information utility and shows how these projects contested and adapted to the “market turn” under Margaret Thatcher. Ultimately, Visions of a Digital Nation compellingly argues that politicians did not impose neoliberalism top-down, but that technology, engineers, and managers shaped these politics from the bottom up.
And here’s some very generous quotes from Andrew Russell and Valérie Schafer about the book:
“Ward's multi-scalar approach and careful examination of key players, infrastructures, and (de)regulation make this well-documented book an essential reference for understanding the historical interplay between digitalization and privatization.”
Valérie Schafer, Professor, University of Luxembourg
“With profound insight and clarity, Visions of a Digital Nation illustrates how Britain navigated private and public ownership during the world-historical collision between computing and communications technologies.”
Andrew L. Russell, Officer-in-Charge, Dean, and Professor of History, SUNY Polytechnic Institute; coauthor of Circuits, Packets, and Protocols: Entrepreneurs and Computer Communications, 1968-1988
Thanks, and let me know if you’ve got any questions about the book!