Communication Systems That Unify Our Society

It is very interesting to know the foundation of how the world was united through various means. Eric Hobsbawm's "The World Unified" provided us with insights on the different ways communication systems unionized the parts of the world benefiting businessmen by providing information on trade and commerce through the telegraph. This is reiterated in chapter 5 of Paul Starr, "The Creation of the Media". The also benefited politicians because the government would know what to control and how to control it. Economically, goods were traded from place to place via advanced technology such as railroads (another way the world was unified); both worked good hand in hand. In addition, population grew because of these technological advancements. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is evident how much impact the communication systems changed the world drastically improving economic, political and social conditions during this period. According to Hobsbawm, the world was unified "by means of communication which had no precedent for regularity, for the capacity to transport vast quantities for goods and numbers of people, and above all for speed: the railway, the steamship, the telegraph...("The World Unified").