The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-line Pioneers

A wonderful history of the telegraph which proves that all of the “novel” problems the Internet brought about actually happened 150 years earlier. Standage pays social attention to the societal changes that the telegraph wrought, and the effect it had on the lives of the telegraph operators who went from highly-skilled rockstars to low-skilled peons and finally to unemployed as voice took over. Breezy, endlessly interesting read.