chapter 1: detailed outline

Geographical space: a barrier to communication
Physical space is no longer insurmountable obstacle to human interaction.
Geography of space has become geography of experience.
Communications history involves questions of how those technologies arise from complex social conditions.
Thanks, to more efficient communication, important social and political development occurred.

Geography and the mythical word.
Most people knew life only as they saw it unfolding within a few square miles of their rural homes.
Travel was unpractical.
Beliefs about earth, heaven, and underworld were built around sacred and profane spaces.
Mythical ideas were richly symbolic and accompanied by expression in all fields.

Ancient encounters of societies and cultures
To construct rational models of knowledge, great philosophers and mathematicians had to see the world based on rational models of knowledge; they saw the world as measurable, they even suggested the division of the world into geographical spaces.

Global explorers: migrants, holy people, merchants.
Migration was a way of life.
Improvement of farming and implants allowed many nomadic groups to settle on fertile lands, unless they were confronted by disease, invasion or war.
Religious people use to travel to transmit their missionaries.

Mapmakers in the medieval world.
Maps were widely used to unlock unknown worlds and nations; it was an integral part of communication.
Maps served many purposes like maritime navigation, religious pilgrimages, military and administrative uses.

Inventors: signals and semaphores.
A time like tracking the emergence of information technologies shows a bewildering array of conceptual and material inventions.
The chronology of innovations can be viewed as evidence of cultural continuities.