Serving a Wired World: London's Telecommunications Workers and the Making of an Information Capital

— —

Katie Hindmarch-Watson

Serving a Wired World

London's Telecommunications Workers and the Making of an Information Capital

Katie Hindmarch-Watson

$49.95

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

University of California Press
10 November 2020

History

Series: Berkeley Series in British Studies

In the public imagination, Silicon Valley embodies the newest of the new—the cutting edge, the forefront of our social networks and our globally interconnected lives. But the pressures exerted on many of today’s communications tech workers mirror those of a much earlier generation of laborers in a very different space: the London workforce that helped launch and shape the massive telecommunications systems operating at the turn of the twentieth century. As the Victorian age ended, affluent Britons came to rely on information exchanged along telegraph and telephone wires for seamless communication: an efficient and impersonal mode of sharing thoughts, demands, and desires. This embrace of seemingly unmediated communication obscured the labor involved in the smooth operation of the network, much as our reliance on social media and app interfaces does today.

Serving a Wired World is a history of information service work embedded in the daily maintenance of liberal Britain and the status quo in the early years of the twentieth century. As Katie Hindmarch-Watson shows, the administrators and engineers who crafted these telecommunications systems created networks according to conventional gender perceptions and social hierarchies, modeling the operation of the networks on the dynamic between master and servant. Despite attempts to render telegraphists and telephone operators invisible, these workers were quite aware of their crucial role in modern life, and they posed creative challenges to their marginalized status—from organizing labor strikes to participating in deviant sexual exchanges. In unexpected ways, these workers turned a flatly neutral telecommunications network into a revolutionary one, challenging the status quo in ways familiar today.

By: Katie Hindmarch-Watson
Imprint: University of California Press
Country of Publication: United States
Volume: 17
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 590g
ISBN: 9780520344730
ISBN 10: 0520344731
Series: Berkeley Series in British Studies
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 10 November 2020
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Katie Hindmarch-Watson is Assistant Professor of Modern British History at Johns Hopkins University.

Reviews for Serving a Wired World: London's Telecommunications Workers and the Making of an Information Capital

Serving a Wired World juxtaposes in colorful ways the varied tensions of the period: between administrators and workers, privacy and mediation, female and male employees, good boys and bad ones, order and rebellion. . . . Today's information workers may recognize some of these tensions, particularly in how library labor is both integral and invisibilized in library operations and how administrative decisions inform public discourse on the labor of information. * College & Research Libraries *