Marconis Wireless and the Rhetoric of a New Technology Springerbriefs in Sociology

"This book examines the discourse surrounding the wireless, created by the Anglo-Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi. The wireless excited early twentieth-century audiences before it even became a viable black box technology. The wireless adhered to modernist values--speed, efficiency, militarization, and progress. Language surrounding the wireless is a form of technical communication, overlooked by today's practitioners. This book establishes a broader definition for technical communication by examining a selection of the discourse surrounding Marconi's wireless. The book's main themes are the following: 1) technical communication is all discourse surrounding technology, 2) the field of technical communication (or technical writing) should incorporate analyses of discourse surrounding technologies into its epistemology, 3) the wireless is a product of the society from which it comes (early twentieth-century Western civilization), and 4) the discourse surrounding the wireless is infused with tropes of progress--speed, efficiency, evolution, and ahistoricity."--Publisher's website Front Matter....Pages i-xx The Rhetoric of Technical Communication....Pages 1-30 Analyzing Technology to Uncover Social Values, Attitudes, and Practices....Pages 31-55 Marconi’s Representations of the Wireless....Pages 57-85 Popular Press Representations of Marconi’s Wireless....Pages 87-107 Tropes of Progress in F. T. Marinetti’s Early Futurist Texts....Pages 109-130 Conclusion—STS and Technical Communication: Expansive Possibilities....Pages 131-133 Notes....Pages 135-145 By examining a selection of the discourse surrounding Marconi's invention of the wireless, which excited early 20th century audiences even before becoming a viable technology, this book establishes a broader definition for contemporary technical communication.