Communication Technology Update and Fundamentals

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Communication
Technology
Update and
Fundamentals
16th Edition

Taylor & Francis
Taylor & Francis Group
http:/taylorandfrancis.com

Communication
Technology
Update and
Fundamentals
16th Edition
Editors
August E. Grant
Jennifer H. Meadows
In association with Technology Futures, Inc.
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
NEW YORK AND LONDON
ROUTLEDGE

Editors:
August E. Grant
Jennifer H. Meadows
Technology Futures, Inc.
Production & Graphics Editor:
Helen Mary V. Marek
Publisher: Ross Wagenhofer
Editorial Assistant: Nicole Salazar
Production Editor: Sian Cahill
Marketing Manager: Lynsey Nurthen
Sixteenth edition published 2018
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Taylor & Francis
The right of August Grant and Jennifer Meadows to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and
of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only
for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Publisher’s note: This book has been prepared from camera‐ready copy provided by the editors. Typeset in
Palatino Linotype by H.M.V. Marek, Technology Futures, Inc.
[First edition published by Technology Futures, Inc. 1992]
[Fifteenth edition published by Focal Press 2016]
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data.
CIP data has been applied for.
HB: 9781138571334
Paper: 9781138571365
eBook: 9780203702871

v
Table of Contents
Preface vii
I Fundamentals ix
1 The Communication Technology Ecosystem, August E. Grant, Ph.D. 1
2 A History of Communication Technology, Yicheng Zhu, M.A. 9
3 Understanding Communication Technologies, Jennifer H. Meadows, Ph.D. 25
4 The Structure of the Communication Industries, August E. Grant, Ph.D. 37
5 Communication Policy & Technology, Lon Berquist, M.A. 49
II Electronic Mass Media 65
6 Digital Television & Video, Peter B. Seel, Ph.D. 67
7 Multichannel Television Services, Paul Driscoll, Ph.D. & Michel Dupagne, Ph.D. 77
8 Radio & Digital Audio, Heidi D. Blossom, Ph.D. 97
9 Digital Signage, Jennifer H. Meadows, Ph.D. 107
10 Cinema Technologies, Michael R. Ogden, Ph.D. 117
III Computers & Consumer Electronics 149
11 Computers, Glenda Alvarado, Ph.D. 151
12 Internet of Things (IoT), Jeffrey S. Wilkinson, Ph.D. 159
13 Automotive Telematics, Denise Belafonte‐Young, M.F.A. 169
14 Video Games, Isaac D. Pletcher, M.F.A. 179
toc

Table of Contents
vi
15 Virtual & Augmented Reality, Rebecca Ormond, M.F.A. 189
16 Home Video, Matthew J. Haught, Ph.D. 199
17 Digital Imaging & Photography, Michael Scott Sheerin, M.S. 207
18 eHealth, Heidi D. Blossom, Ph.D. & Alex Neal, M.A. 219
19 Esports, Jennifer H. Meadows, Ph.D. & Max Grubb, Ph.D. 233
20 Ebooks, Steven J. Dick, Ph.D. 241
IV Networking Technologies 251
21 Broadband & Home Networks, John J. Lombardi, Ph.D. 253
22 Telephony, William R. Davie, Ph.D. 271
23 The Internet, Stephanie Bor, Ph.D. & Leila Chelbi, M.M.C. 279
24 Social Media, Rachel A. Stuart, M.A. 291
25 Big Data, Tony R. DeMars, Ph.D. 305
V Conclusions 317
26 Other New Technologies, Jennifer H. Meadows, Ph.D. 319
27 Your Future & Communication Technologies, August E. Grant, Ph.D. 323
Index 327
Glossary and Updates can be found on the
Communication Technology Update and Fundamentals website
http://www.tfi.com/ctu/

vii
Preface
reat changes in technology are coming at a faster and faster pace, introducing new opportunities,
challenges, careers, and fields of study at a rate that hasn’t been experienced in human history. Keeping
up with these changes can simultaneously provide amusement and befuddlement, as well as economic
prosperity and ruin.
That’s where you come in. Whether you are trying to plan a lucrative investment or a career in media, or you
simply have to pass a particular class in order to graduate, the field of communication technologies has become
important enough to you that you are investing in the time to read this book. Be warned: the goal of the authors
in this book is to serve all of those needs. To do so, the book starts by explaining the Communication Technology
Ecosystem, then applies this ecosystem as a tool to help you understand each of the technologies presented.
This is the 16th edition of this book, and most of the book is changed from the 15th edition. In addition to
updating every chapter with the latest developments, we have a first‐time chapter exploring eSports (Chapter
19) and a chapter we haven’t seen in more than a decade discussing Virtual Reality (Chapter 15). A few other
chapters, including Video Games (Chapter 14), Home Video (Chapter 16), ebooks (Chapter 19), and Computers
(Chapter 11) have been rewritten from scratch to provide a more contemporary discussion.
One thing shared by all of the contributors to this book is a passion for communication technology. In order
to keep this book as current as possible we asked the authors to work under extremely tight deadlines. Authors
begin working in late 2017, and most chapters were submitted in February or March 2018 with the final details
added in April 2018. Individually, the chapters provide snapshots of the state of the field for individual
technologies, but together they present a broad overview of the role that communication technologies play in our
everyday lives. The efforts of these authors have produced a remarkable compilation, and we thank them for all
their hard work in preparing this volume.
The constant in production of this book is our editor extraordinaire, TFI’s Helen Mary V. Marek, who deftly
handled all production details, moving all 27 chapters from draft to camera‐ready in weeks. Helen Mary also
provided on‐demand graphics production, adding visual elements to help make the content more
understandable. Our editorial and marketing team at Routledge, including Ross Wagenhoffer and Nicole Salazar,
ensured that production and promotion of the book were as smooth as ever.
G
p

Preface
viii
We are most grateful to our spouses (and partners in life), Diane Grant and Floyd Meadows for giving us this
month every two years so that we can disappear into a haze of bits, pixels, toner, and topics to render the book
you are reading right now. They know that a strange compulsion arises every two years, with publication of the
book being followed immediately by the satisfaction we get from being part of the process of helping you
understand and apply new communications technologies.
You can keep up with developments on technologies discussed in this book by visiting our companion
website, where we use the same technologies discussed in the book to make sure you have the latest information.
The companion website for the Communication Technology Update and Fundamentals: www.tfi.com/ctu. The
complete Glossary for the book is on the site, where it is much easier to find individual entries than in the paper
version of the book. We have also moved the vast quantity of statistical data on each of the communication
technologies that were formerly printed in Chapter 2 to the site. As always, we will periodically update the
website to supplement the text with new information and links to a wide variety of information available over
the Internet.
Your interest and support is the reason we do this book every two years, and we listen to your suggestions
so that we can improve the book after every edition. You are invited to send us updates for the website, ideas for
new topics, and other contributions that will inform all members of the community. You are invited to
communicate directly with us via email, snail mail, social media, or voice.
Thank you for being part of the CTUF community!
Augie Grant and Jennifer Meadows
April 1, 2018
Augie Grant Jennifer H. Meadows
School of Journalism and Mass Communications Dept. of Media Arts, Design, and Technology
University of South Carolina California State University, Chico
Columbia, SC 29208 Chico, CA 95929‐0504
Phone: 803.777.4464 Phone: 530.898.4775
augie@sc.edu jmeadows@csuchico.edu
Twitter: @augiegrant Twitter: @mediaartsjen

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1
The Communication
Technology Ecosystem
August E. Grant, Ph.D.*
ommunication technologies are the nervous
system of contemporary society, transmitting
and distributing sensory and control infor‐
mation and interconnecting a myriad of interdepend‐
ent units. These technologies are critical to commerce,
essential to entertainment, and intertwined in our in‐
terpersonal relationships. Because these technologies
are so vitally important, any change in communica‐
tion technologies has the potential to impact virtually
every area of society.
One of the hallmarks of the industrial revolution
was the introduction of new communication technolo‐
gies as mechanisms of control that played an important
role in almost every area of the production and distri‐
bution of manufactured goods (Beniger, 1986). These
communication technologies have evolved throughout
the past two centuries at an increasingly rapid rate.
This evolution shows no signs of slowing, so an under‐
standing of this evolution is vital for any individual
wishing to attain or retain a position in business, gov‐
ernment, or education.
The economic and political challenges faced by the
United States and other countries since the beginning
of the new millennium clearly illustrate the central role
these communication systems play in our society. Just
* J. Rion McKissick Professor of Journalism, School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of South Carolina (Columbia,
South Carolina).
as the prosperity of the 1990s was credited to advances
in technology, the economic challenges that followed
were linked as well to a major downturn in the technol‐
ogy sector. Today, communication technology is seen
by many as a tool for making more efficient use of a
wide range of resources including time and energy.
Communication technologies play as critical a
part in our private lives as they do in commerce and
control in society. Geographic distances are no longer
barriers to relationships thanks to the bridging power
of communication technologies. We can also be enter‐
tained and informed in ways that were unimaginable
a century ago thanks to these technologies—and they
continue to evolve and change before our eyes.
This text provides a snapshot of the state of tech‐
nologies in our society. The individual chapter au‐
thors have compiled facts and figures from hundreds
of sources to provide the latest information on more
than two dozen communication technologies. Each
discussion explains the roots and evolution, recent de‐
velopments, and current status of the technology as of
mid‐2018. In discussing each technology, we address
them from a systematic perspective, looking at a range
of factors beyond hardware.
C
1

Section I  Fundamentals
2
The goal is to help you analyze emerging technol‐
ogies and be better able to predict which ones will suc‐
ceed and which ones will fail. That task is more
difficult to achieve than it sounds. Let’s look at an ex‐
ample of how unpredictable technology can be.
The Alphabet Tale
As this book goes to press in mid‐2018, Alphabet,
the parent company of Google, is the most valuable
media company in the world in terms of market capi‐
talization (the total value of all shares of stock held in
the company). To understand how Alphabet attained
that lofty position, we have to go back to the late
1990s, when commercial applications of the Internet
were taking off. There was no question in the minds
of engineers and futurists that the Internet was going
to revolutionize the delivery of information, entertain‐
ment, and commerce. The big question was how it
was going to happen.
Those who saw the Internet as a medium for in‐
formation distribution knew that advertiser support
would be critical to its long‐term financial success.
They knew that they could always find a small group
willing to pay for content, but the majority of people
preferred free content. To become a mass medium
similar to television, newspapers, and magazines, an
Internet advertising industry was needed.
At that time, most Internet advertising was ban‐
ner ads—horizontal display ads that stretched across
most of the screen to attract attention, but took up
very little space on the screen. The problem was that
most people at that time accessed the Internet using
slow, dial‐up connections, so advertisers were limited
in what they could include in these banners to about
a dozen words of text and simple graphics. The dream
among advertisers was to be able to use rich media,
including full‐motion video, audio, animation, and
every other trick that makes television advertising so
successful.
When broadband Internet access started to spread,
advertisers were quick to add rich media to their ban‐
ners, as well as create other types of ads using graphics,
video, and sound. These ads were a little more effec‐
tive, but many Internet users did not like the intrusive
nature of rich media messages.
At about the same time, two Stanford students, Ser‐
gey Brin and Larry Page, had developed a new type of
search engine, Google, that ranked results on the basis
of how often content was referred to or linked from
other sites, allowing their computer algorithms to cre‐
ate more robust and relevant search results (in most
cases) than having a staff of people indexing Web con‐
tent. What they needed was a way to pay for the costs
of the servers and other technology.
According to Vise & Malseed (2006), their budget
did not allow the company, then known as Google, to
create and distribute rich media ads. They could do
text ads, but they decided to do them differently from
other Internet advertising, using computer algorithms
to place these small text ads on the search results that
were most likely to give the advertisers results. With
a credit card, anyone could use this “AdWords” ser‐
vice, specifying the search terms they thought should
display their ads, writing the brief ads (less than 100
characters total—just over a dozen words), and even
specifying how much they were willing to pay every
time someone clicked on their ad. Even more revolu‐
tionary, the Google team decided that no one should
have to pay for an ad unless a user clicked on it.
For advertisers, it was as close to a no‐lose propo‐
sition as they could find. Advertisers did not have to
pay unless a person was interested enough to click on
the ad. They could set a budget that Google computers
could follow, and Google provided a control panel for
advertisers that gave a set of measures that was a
dream for anyone trying to make a campaign more ef‐
fective. These measures indicated not only the overall
effectiveness of the ad, but also the effectiveness of
each message, each keyword, and every part of every
campaign.
The result was remarkable. Google’s share of the
search market was not that much greater than the
companies that had held the #1 position earlier, but
Google was making money—lots of money—from
these little text ads. Wall Street investors noticed, and,
once Google went public, investors bid up the stock
price, spurred by increases in revenues and a very
large profit margin. Today, Google’s parent company,
renamed Alphabet, is involved in a number of other
ventures designed to aggregate and deliver content
ranging from text to full‐motion video, but its little

Chapter 1  The Communication Technology Ecosystem
3
text ads on its Google search engine are still the pri‐
mary revenue generator.
In retrospect, it was easy to see why Google was
such a success. Their little text ads were effective be‐
cause of context—they always appeared where they
would be the most effective. They were not intrusive,
so people did not mind the ads on Google pages, and
later on other pages that Google served ads to through
its “content network.” Plus, advertisers had a degree
of control, feedback, and accountability that no adver‐
tising medium had ever offered before (Grant & Wil‐
kinson, 2007).
So what lessons should we learn from this story?
Advertisers have their own set of lessons, but there are
a separate set of lessons for those wishing to under‐
stand new media. First, no matter how insightful, no
one is ever able to predict whether a technology will
succeed or fail. Second, success can be due as much to
luck as to careful, deliberate planning and investment.
Third, simplicity matters—there are few advertising
messages as simple as the little text ads you see when
doing a Google search.
The Alphabet tale provides an example of the util‐
ity of studying individual companies and industries, so
the focus throughout this book is on individual tech‐
nologies. These individual snapshots, however, com‐
prise a larger mosaic representing the communication
networks that bind individuals together and enable
them to function as a society. No single technology can
be understood without understanding the competing
and complementary technologies and the larger social
environment within which these technologies exist. As
discussed in the following section, all of these factors
(and others) have been considered in preparing each
chapter through application of the “technology ecosys‐
tem.” Following this discussion, an overview of the re‐
mainder of the book is presented.
The Communication
The most obvious aspect of communication tech‐
nology is the hardware—the physical equipment re‐
lated to the technology. The hardware is the most
tangible part of a technology system, and new technol‐
ogies typically spring from developments in hardware.
However, understanding communication technology
requires more than just studying the hardware. One of
the characteristics of today’s digital technologies is that
most are based upon computer technology, requiring
instructions and algorithms more commonly known as
“software.”
In addition to understanding the hardware and soft‐
ware of the technology, it is just as important to un‐
derstand the content communicated through the
technology system. Some consider the content as an‐
other type of software. Regardless of the terminology
used, it is critical to understand that digital technolo‐
gies require a set of instructions (the software) as well
as the equipment and content.
Figure 1.1
The Communication Technology
Ecosystem
Source: A. E. Grant
The hardware, software, and content must also be
studied within a larger context. Rogers’ (1986) defini‐
tion of “communication technology” includes some of
these contextual factors, defining it as “the hardware
equipment, organizational structures, and social val‐
ues by which individuals collect, process, and ex‐
change information with other individuals” (p. 2). An
even broader range of factors is suggested by Ball‐
Rokeach (1985) in her media system dependency the‐
ory, which suggests that communication media can be
understood by analyzing dependency relations within
and across levels of analysis, including the individual,
organizational, and system levels. Within the system

4
level, Ball‐Rokeach identifies three systems for analy‐
sis: the media system, the political system, and the
economic system.
These two approaches have been synthesized into
the “Technology Ecosystem” illustrated in Figure 1.1.
The core of the technology ecosystem consists of the
hardware, software, and content (as previously de‐
fined). Surrounding this core is the organizational in‐
frastructure: the group of organizations involved in
the production and distribution of the technology.
The next level moving outwards is the system level,
including the political, economic, and media systems,
as well as other groups of individuals or organizations
serving a common set of functions in society. Finally,
the individual users of the technology cut across all of
the other areas, providing a focus for understanding
each one. The basic premise of the technology ecosys‐
tem is that all areas of the ecosystem interact and must
be examined in order to understand a technology.
(The technology ecosystem is an elaboration of
the “umbrella perspective” (Grant, 2010) that was ex‐
plicated in earlier editions of this book to illustrate the
elements that need to be studied in order to under‐
stand communication technologies.)
Adding another layer of complexity to each of the
areas of the technology ecosystem is also helpful. In
order to identify the impact that each individual char‐
acteristic of a technology has, the factors within each
area of the ecosystem may be identified as “enabling,”
“limiting,” “motivating,” and “inhibiting” depending
upon the role they play in the technology’s diffusion.
Enabling factors are those that make an application
possible. For example, the fact that the coaxial cable
used to deliver traditional cable television can carry
dozens of channels is an enabling factor at the hard‐
ware level. Similarly, the decision of policy makers to
allocate a portion of the radio frequency spectrum for
cellular telephony is an enabling factor at the system
level (political system). One starting point to use in ex‐
amining any technology is to make a list of the under‐
lying factors from each area of the technology ecosys‐
tem that make the technology possible in the first place.
Limiting factors are the opposite of enabling fac‐
tors; they are those factors that create barriers to the
adoption or impacts of a technology. A great example
is related to the cellular telephone illustration in the
previous paragraph. The fact that the policy makers
discussed above initially permitted only two compa‐
nies to offer cellular telephone service in each market
was a system level limitation on that technology. The
later introduction of digital technology made it possi‐
ble for another four companies to compete for mobile
phone service. To a consumer, six telephone compa‐
nies may seem to be more than is needed, but to a
start‐up company wanting to enter the market, this
system‐level factor represents a definite limitation.
Again, it is useful to apply the technology ecosystem
to create a list of factors that limit the adoption, use,
or impacts of any specific communication technology.
Motivating factors are a little more complicated.
They are those factors that provide a reason for the
adoption of a technology. Technologies are not adopted
just because they exist. Rather, individuals, organiza‐
tions, and social systems must have a reason to take ad‐
vantage of a technology. The desire of local telephone
companies for increased profits, combined with the fact
that growth in providing local telephone service is lim‐
ited, is an organizational factor motivating the telcos to
enter the markets for new communication technolo‐
gies. Individual users desiring information more quickly
can be motivated to adopt electronic information tech‐
nologies. If a technology does not have sufficient moti‐
vating factors for its use, it cannot be a success.
Inhibiting factors are the opposite of motivating
ones, providing a disincentive for adoption or use of
a communication technology. An example of an inhib‐
iting factor at the organizational level might be a com‐
pany’s history of bad customer service. Regardless of
how useful a new technology might be, if customers
don’t trust a company, they are not likely to purchase
its products or services. One of the most important in‐
hibiting factors for most new technologies is the cost
to individual users. Each potential user must decide
whether the cost is worth the service, considering
their budget and the number of competing technolo‐
gies. Competition from other technologies is one of
the biggest barriers any new (or existing) technology
faces. Any factor that works against the success of a
technology can be considered an inhibiting factor. As
you might guess, there are usually more inhibiting
factors for most technologies than motivating ones.
And if the motivating factors are more numerous and

5
stronger than the inhibiting factors, it is an easy bet
that a technology will be a success.
All four factors—enabling, limiting, motivating,
and inhibiting—can be identified at the individual
user, organizational, content, and system levels. How‐
ever, hardware and software can only be enabling or
limiting; by themselves, hardware and software do
not provide any motivating factors. The motivating
factors must always come from the messages trans‐
mitted or one of the other areas of the ecosystem.
The final dimension of the technology ecosystem
relates to the environment within which communica‐
tion technologies are introduced and operate. These
factors can be termed “external” factors, while ones
relating to the technology itself are “internal” factors.
In order to understand a communication technology
or be able to predict how a technology will diffuse,
both internal and external factors must be studied.
Applying the Communication
The best way to understand the communication
technology ecosystem is to apply it to a specific tech‐
nology. One of the fastest diffusing technologies dis‐
cussed later in this book is the “personal assistant,”
such as the Amazon Alexa or Google Home—these
devices provide a great application of the communi‐
cation technology ecosystem.
Let’s start with the hardware. Most personal as‐
sistants are small or medium‐sized units, designed to
sit on a shelf or table. Studying the hardware reveals
that the unit contains multiple speakers, a micro‐
phone, some computer circuitry, and a radio transmit‐
ter and receiver. Studying the hardware, we can get
clues about the functionality of the device, but the key
to the functionality is the software.
The software related to the personal assistant en‐
ables conversion of speech heard by the microphone
into text or other commands that connect to another
set of software designed to fulfill the commands given
to the system. From the perspective of the user, it
doesn’t matter whether the device converts speech to
commands or whether the device transmits speech to
a central computer where the translation takes place—
the device is designed so that it doesn’t matter to the
user. The important thing that becomes apparent is
that the hardware used by the system extends well be‐
yond the device through the Internet to servers that
are programmed to deliver answers and content re‐
quested through the personal assistant.
So, who owns these servers? To answer that ques‐
tion, we have to look at the organizational infrastruc‐
ture. It is apparent that there are two distinct sets of
organizations involved—one set that makes and dis‐
tributes the devices themselves to the public and the
other that provides the back‐end processing power to
find answers and deliver content. For the Amazon
Alexa, Amazon has designed and arranged for the
manufacture of the device. (Note that few companies
specialize in making hardware; rather, most commu‐
nication hardware is made by companies that special‐
ize in manufacturing on a contract basis.) Amazon
also owns and controls the servers that interpret and
seek answers to questions and commands. But to get
to those servers, the commands have to first pass
through cable or phone networks owned by other
companies, with answers or content provided by serv‐
ers on the Internet owned by still other companies. At
this point, it is helpful to examine the economic rela‐
tionships among the companies involved. The users’
Internet Service Provider (ISP) passes all commands
and content from the home device to the cloud‐based
servers, which are, in turn, connected to servers
owned by other companies that deliver content.
So, if a person requests a weather forecast, the
servers connect to a weather service for content. A
person might also request music, finding themselves
connected to Amazon’s own music service or to an‐
other service such as Pandora or Sirius/XM. A person
ordering a pizza will have their message directed to
the appropriate pizza delivery service, with the only
content returned being a confirmation of the order,
perhaps with status updates as the order is fulfilled.
The pizza delivery example is especially important
because it demonstrates the economics of the system.
The servers used are expensive to purchase and oper‐
ate, so the company that designs and sells personal as‐
sistants has a motivation to contract with individual
pizza delivery services to pay a small commission

6
every time someone orders a pizza. Extending this ex‐
ample to multiple other services will help you under‐
stand why some services are provided for free but
others must be paid, with the pieces of the system
working together to spread revenue to all of the com‐
panies involved.
The point is that it is not possible to understand
the personal assistant without understanding all of
the organizations implicated in the operation of the
device. And if two organizations decide not to coop‐
erate with each other, content or service may simply
not be available.
The potential conflicts among these organizations
can move our attention to the next level of the ecosys‐
tem, the social system level. The political system, for
example, has the potential to enable services by allow‐
ing or encouraging collaboration among organiza‐
tions. Or it can do the opposite, limiting or inhibiting
cooperation with regulations. (Net neutrality, dis‐
cussed in Chapter 5, is a good example of the role
played by the political system in enabling or limiting
capabilities of technology.) The system of retail stores
enables distribution of the personal assistant devices
to local retail stores, making it easier for a user to be‐
come an “adopter” of the device.
Studying the personal assistant also helps under‐
stand the enabling and limiting functions. For exam‐
ple, the fact that Amazon has programmed the Alexa
app to accept commands in dozens of languages from
Spanish to Klingon is an enabling factor, but the fact
that there are dozens of other languages that have not
been programming is definitely a limiting factor.
Similarly, the ease of ordering a pizza through
your personal assistant is a motivating factor, but hav‐
ing your device not understand your commands is an
inhibiting factor.
Finally, examination of the environment gives us
more information, including competitive devices,
public sentiment, and general economic environment.
All of those details help us to understand how
personal assistants work and how companies can
profit in many different ways from their use. But we
can’t fully understand the role that these devices play
in the lives of their users without studying the indi‐
vidual user. We can examine what services are used,
why they are used, how often they are used, the im‐
pacts of their use, and much more.
Applying the Communication Technology Eco‐
system thus allows us to look at a technology, its uses,
and its effects by giving a multidimensional perspec‐
tive that provides a more comprehensive insight than
we would get from just examining the hardware or
software.
Each communication technology discussed in this
book has been analyzed using the technology ecosys‐
tem to ensure that all relevant factors have been in‐
cluded in the discussions. As you will see, in most
cases, organizational and system‐level factors (espe‐
cially political factors) are more important in the de‐
velopment and adoption of communication technol‐
ogies than the hardware itself. For example, political
forces have, to date, prevented the establishment of a
single world standard for high‐definition television
(HDTV) production and transmission. As individual
standards are selected in countries and regions, the
standard selected is as likely to be the product of po‐
litical and economic factors as of technical attributes
of the system.
Organizational factors can have similar powerful
effects. For example, as discussed in Chapter 4, the en‐
try of a single company, IBM, into the personal com‐
puter business in the early 1980s resulted in funda‐
mental changes in the entire industry, dictating stand‐
ards and anointing an operating system (MS‐DOS) as
a market leader. Finally, the individuals who adopt
(or choose not to adopt) a technology, along with their
motivations and the manner in which they use the
technology, have profound impacts on the develop‐
ment and success of a technology following its initial
introduction.
Perhaps the best indication of the relative im‐
portance of organizational and system‐level factors is
the number of changes individual authors made to the
chapters in this book between the time of the initial
chapter submission in January 2018 and production of
the final, camera‐ready text in April 2018. Very little
new information was added regarding hardware, but
numerous changes were made due to developments
at the organizational and system levels.

7
To facilitate your understanding of all of the ele‐
ments related to the technologies explored, each chap‐
ter in this book has been written from the perspective
of the technology ecosystem. The individual writers
have endeavored to update developments in each
area to the extent possible in the brief summaries pro‐
vided. Obviously, not every technology experienced
developments in each area of the ecosystem, so each
report is limited to areas in which relatively recent de‐
velopments have taken place.
Why Study New Technologies?
One constant in the study of media is that new
technologies seem to get more attention than tradi‐
tional, established technologies. There are many rea‐
sons for the attention. New technologies are more
dynamic and evolve more quickly, with greater po‐
tential to cause change in other parts of the media sys‐
tem. Perhaps the reason for our attention is the natural
attraction that humans have to motion, a characteristic
inherited from our most distant ancestors.
There are a number of other reasons for studying
new technologies. Maybe you want to make a lot of
money—and there is a lot of money to be made (and
lost!) on new technologies. If you are planning a career
in the media, you may simply be interested in know‐
ing how the media are changing and evolving, and
how those changes will affect your career.
Or you might want to learn lessons from the failure
of new communication technologies so you can avoid
failure in your own career, investments, etc. Simply
put, the majority of new technologies introduced do
not succeed in the market. Some fail because the tech‐
nology itself was not attractive to consumers (such as
the 1980s’ attempt to provide AM stereo radio). Some
fail because they were far ahead of the market, such as
Qube, the first interactive cable television system, intro‐
duced in the 1970s. Others failed because of bad timing
or aggressive marketing from competitors that suc‐
ceeded despite inferior technology.
The final reason for studying new communication
technologies is to identify patterns of adoption, ef‐
fects, economics, and competition so that we can be
prepared to understand, use, and/or compete with the
next generation of media. Virtually every new tech‐
nology discussed in this book is going to be one of
those “traditional, established technologies” in a few
short years, but there will always be another genera‐
tion of new media to challenge the status quo.
Overview of Book
The key to getting the most out of this book is
therefore to pay as much attention as possible to the
reasons that some technologies succeed and others
fail. To that end, this book provides you with a num‐
ber of tools you can apply to virtually any new tech‐
nology that comes along. These tools are explored in
the first five chapters, which we refer to as the Com‐
munication Technology Fundamentals. You might be
tempted to skip over these to get to the latest develop‐
ments about the individual technologies that are mak‐
ing an impact today, but you will be much better
equipped to learn lessons from these technologies if
you are armed with these tools.
The first of these is the “technology ecosystem”
discussed previously that broadens attention from the
technology itself to the users, organizations, and sys‐
tem surrounding that technology. To that end, each of
the technologies explored in this book provides de‐
tails about all of the elements of the ecosystem.
Of course, studying the history of each technology
can help you find patterns and apply them to different
technologies, times, and places. In addition to includ‐
ing a brief history of each technology, the next chapter,
A History of Communication Technologies, provides a
broad overview of most of the technologies discussed
later in the book, allowing comparisons along a num‐
ber of dimensions: the year introduced, growth rate,
number of current users, etc. This chapter highlights
commonalties in the evolution of individual technolo‐
gies, as well as presents the “big picture” before we
delve into the details. By focusing on the number of
users over time, this chapter also provides a useful ba‐
sis of comparison across technologies.
Another useful tool in identifying patterns across
technologies is the application of theories related to
new communication technologies. By definition, theo‐
ries are general statements that identify the underlying

8
mechanisms for adoption and effects of these new tech‐
nologies. Chapter 3 provides an overview of a wide
range of these theories and provides a set of analytic
perspectives that you can apply to both the technolo‐
gies in this book and any new technologies that follow.
The structure of communication industries is then
addressed in Chapter 4. This chapter then explores the
complexity of organizational relationships, along with
the need to differentiate between the companies that
make the technologies and those that sell the technol‐
ogies. The most important force at the system level of
the ecosystem, regulation, is introduced in Chapter 5.
These introductory chapters provide a structure
and a set of analytic tools that define the study of com‐
munication technologies. Following this introduction,
the book then addresses the individual technologies.
The technologies discussed in this book are orga‐
nized into three sections: Electronic Mass Media,
Computers & Consumer Electronics, and Networking
Technologies. These three are not necessarily exclu‐
sive; for example, Digital Signage could be classified
as either an electronic mass medium or a computer
technology. The ultimate decision regarding where to
put each technology was made by determining which
set of current technologies most closely resemble the
technology. Thus, Digital Signage was classified with
electronic mass media. This process also locates the
discussion of a cable television technology—cable mo‐
dems—in the Broadband and Home Networks chap‐
ter in the Networking Technologies section.
Each chapter is followed by a brief bibliography
that represents a broad overview of literally hundreds
of books and articles that provide details about these
technologies. It is hoped that the reader will not only
use these references but will examine the list of source
material to determine the best places to find newer in‐
formation since the publication of this Update.
To help you find your place in this emerging tech‐
nology ecosystem, each technology chapter includes a
paragraph or two discussing how you can get a job in
that area of technology. And to help you imagine the
future, some authors have also added their prediction
of what that technology will be like in 2033—or fifteen
years after this book is published. The goal is not to be
perfectly accurate, but rather to show you some of the
possibilities that could emerge in that time frame.
Most of the technologies discussed in this book are
continually evolving. As this book was completed, many
technological developments were announced but not re‐
leased, corporate mergers were under discussion, and
regulations had been proposed but not passed. Our goal
is for the chapters in this book to establish a basic under‐
standing of the structure, functions, and background
for each technology, and for the supplementary Internet
site to provide brief synopses of the latest developments
for each technology. (The address for the website is
www.tfi.com/ctu.)
The final chapter returns to the “big picture” pre‐
sented in this book, attempting to place these discus‐
sions in a larger context, exploring the process of
starting a company to exploit or profit from these
technologies. Any text such as this one can never be
fully comprehensive, but ideally this text will provide
you with a broad overview of the current develop‐
ments in communication technology.
Bibliography
Ball‐Rokeach, S. J. (1985). The origins of media system dependency: A sociological perspective. Communication Research, 12
(4), 485‐510.
Beniger, J. (1986). The control revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Grant, A. E. (2010). Introduction to communication technologies. In A. E. Grant & J. H. Meadows (Eds.) Communication
Technology Update and Fundamentals (12th ed). Boston: Focal Press.
Grant, A. E. & Wilkinson, J. S. (2007, February). Lessons for communication technologies from Web advertising. Paper
presented to the Mid‐Winter Conference of the Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication, Reno.
Rogers, E. M. (1986). Communication technology: The new media in society. New York: Free Press.
Vise, D. & Malseed, M. (2006). The Google story: Inside the hottest business, media, and technology success of our time. New York: Delta.

9
A History of
Communication
Technology
Yicheng Zhu, Ph.D.
he other chapters in this book provide details re‐
garding the history of one or more communica‐
tion technologies. However, one needs to under‐
stand that history works, in some ways, like a telescope.
The closer an observer looks at the details, i.e. the par‐
ticular human behaviors that changed communication
technologies, the less they can grasp the big picture.
This chapter attempts to provide the big picture by
discussing recent advancements along with a review of
happenings “before we were born.” Without the un‐
derstanding of the collective memory of the trailblazers
of communication technology, we will be “children for‐
ever” when we make interpretations and implications
from history records. (Cicero, 1876).
We will visit the print era, the electronic era, and
the digital era in this chapter. To provide a useful per‐
spective, we compare numerical statistics of adoption
and use of these technologies across time. To that end,
this chapter follows patterns adopted in previous sum‐
maries of trends in U.S. communications media (Brown

Doctoral candidate in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of South Carolina (Columbia, SC).
(Zhu and the editors acknowledge the contributions of the late Dan Brown, Ph.D., who created the first versions of this chapter and the
related figures and tables).
& Bryant, 1989; Brown, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004,
2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014; Zhu & Brown, 2016). Non‐
monetary units are reported when possible, although
dollar expenditures appear as supplementary measures.
A notable exception is the de facto standard of measur‐
ing motion picture acceptance in the market: box office
receipts.
Government sources are preferred for consistency
in this chapter. However, they have recently become
more volatile in terms of format, measurement and
focus due to the shortened life circle of technologies
(for example, some sources don’t distinguish laptops
from tablets when calculating PC shipments). Readers
should use caution in interpreting data for individual
years and instead emphasize the trends over several
years. One limitation of this government data is the lag
time before statistics are reported, with the most recent
data being a year or more older. The companion web‐
site for this book (www.tfi.com/ctu) reports more detailed
statistics than could be printed in this chapter.
T
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Title: Mars is My Destination
Author: Frank Belknap Long
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARS IS MY
DESTINATION ***

MARS IS MY DESTINATION
a science-fiction adventure by
FRANK BELKNAP LONG
PYRAMID BOOKS
NEW YORK
MARS IS MY DESTINATION
A Pyramid Book
First printing, June 1962
This book is fiction. No resemblance is intended between
any
character herein and any person, living or dead; any such
resemblance is purely coincidental.

Copyright 1962, by Pyramid Publications, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Pyramid Books are published by Pyramid Publications, Inc.
444 Madison Avenue, New York 22, New York, U.S.A.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was
renewed.]

MARS
... Earth's first colony in Space. Men killed for the coveted ticket that
allowed them to go there. And, once there, the killing went on....
MARS
... Ralph Graham's goal since boyhood—and he was Mars-bound
with authority that put the whole planet in his pocket—if he could
live long enough to assert it!
MARS
... source of incalculable wealth for humanity—and deadly danger for
those who tried to get it!
MARS
... in Earth's night sky, a symbol of the god of war—in this tense
novel of the future, a vivid setting for stirring action!
CONTENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21

1
I'd known for ten minutes that something terrible was going to
happen. It was in the cards, building to a zero-count climax.
The spaceport bar was filled with a fresh, washed-clean smell, as if
all the winds of space had been blowing through it. There was an
autumn tang in the air as well, because it was open at both ends,
and out beyond was New Chicago, with its parks and tall buildings,
and the big inland sea that was Lake Michigan.
It was all right ... if you just let your mind dwell on what was
outside. Men and women with their shoulders held straight and a
new lift to the way they felt and thought, because Earth wasn't a
closed-circuit any more. Kids in the parks pretending they were
spacemen, bundled up in insulated jackets, having the time of their
lives. A blue jay perched on a tree, the leaves turning red and yellow
around it. A nurse in a starched white uniform pushing a
perambulator, her red-gold hair whipped by the wind, a dreamy look
in her eyes.
Nothing could spoil any part of that. It was there to stay and I
breathed in deeply a couple of times, refusing to remember that in
the turbulent, round-the-clock world of the spaceports, Death was
an inveterate barhopper.
Then I did remember, because I had to. You can't bury your head in
the sand to shut out ugliness for long, unless you're ostrich-minded
and are willing to let your integrity go down the drain.
I didn't know what time it was and I didn't much care. I only knew
that Death had come in late in the afternoon, and was hovering in
stony silence at the far end of the bar.
He was there, all right, even if he had the same refractive index as
the air around him and you could see right through him. The sixth-

sense kind of awareness that everyone experiences at times—call it
a premonition, if you wish—had started an alarm bell ringing in my
mind.
It was still ringing when I raised my eyes, and knew for sure that all
the furies that ever were had picked that particular time and place to
hold open house.
I saw it begin to happen.
It began so suddenly it had the impact of a big, hard-knuckled fist
crashing down on the spaceport bar, startling everyone, jolting even
the solitary drinkers out of their private nightmares.
Actually the violence hadn't quite reached that stage. But it was a
safe bet that it would in another ten or twelve seconds. And when it
did there was no chain or big double lock on Earth that could keep it
from terminating in bloodshed.
The tipoff was the way it started, as if a fuse had been lit that would
blow the place apart. Just two voices for an instant, raised in anger,
one ringing out like a pistol shot. But I knew that something was
dangerously wrong the instant I caught sight of the two men who
were doing the arguing.
The one whose voice had made every glass on the long bar vibrate
like a tuning fork was a blond giant, six-foot-four at least and built
massive around the shoulders. His shirt was open at the throat and
his chest was sweat-sheened and he had the kind of outsized
ruggedness that made you feel it would have taken a heavy rock-
crushing machine a full half hour to flatten him out.
The other was of average height and only looked small by contrast.
He was more than holding his own, however, standing up to the
Viking character defiantly. His weather-beaten face was as tight as a
drum, and his hair was standing straight up, as though a charge of
high-voltage electricity had passed right through him.
He just happened to have unusually bristly hair, I guess. But it gave
him a very weird look indeed.

I don't know why someone picked that critical moment to shout a
warning, because everyone could see it was the kind of argument
that couldn't be stopped by anything short of strong-armed
intervention. Advice at that point could be just as dangerous as
pouring kerosene on the fuse, to make it burn faster.
But someone did yell out, at the top of his lungs. "Pipe down, you
two! What do you think this is, a debating society?"
It could have turned into that, all right, the deadliest kind of
debating society, with the stoned contingent taking sides for no sane
reason. It could have started off as a free-for-all and ended with five
or six of the heaviest drinkers lying prone, with bashed-in skulls.
The barkeep made a makeshift megaphone of his two hands and
added to the confusion by shouting: "Get back in line or I'll have you
run right out of here. I'll show you just how tough I can get. Every
time something like this happens I get blamed for it. I'm goddam
sick of being in the middle."
"That's telling them, John! Need any help?"
"No, stay where you are. I can handle it."
I didn't think he could, not even if he was split down the middle into
two men twice his size. I didn't think anyone could, because by this
time I'd had a chance to take a long, steady, camera-eye look at the
expression on the Viking character's face.
I'd seen that expression before and I knew what it meant. The
Viking character was having a virulent sour grapes reaction to
something Average Size had said. It had really taken hold, like a
smallpox vaccination that's much too strong, and his inner torment
had become just agonizing enough to send him into a towering rage.
Average Size had probably been boasting, telling everyone how lucky
he was to be on the passenger list of the next Mars-bound rocket.
And in a crowded spaceport bar, where Martian Colonization Board
clearances are at a terrific premium, you don't indulge in that kind of

talk. Not unless you have a suicide complex and are dead set on
leaving the earth without traveling out into space at all.
Now things were coming to a head so fast there was no time to
cheat Death of his cue. He was starting to come right out into the
open, scythe swinging, punctual to the dot. I was sure of it the
instant I saw the gun gleaming in the Viking character's hand and
the smaller man recoiling from him, his eyes fastened on the
weapon in stark terror.
Oh, you fool! I thought. Why did you provoke him? You should have
expected this, you should have known. What good is a Mars
clearance if you end up with a bullet in your spine?
For some strange reason the Viking character seemed in no hurry to
blast. He seemed to be savoring the look of terror in Average Size's
eyes, letting his fury diminish by just a little, as if by allowing a tenth
of it to escape through a steam-spigot safety valve he could make
more sure of his aim. It made me wonder if I couldn't still get to
them in time.
The instant I realized there was still a chance I knew I'd have to try.
I was in good physical trim and no man is an island when the sands
are running out. I didn't want to die, but neither did Average Size
and there are obligations you can't sidestep if you want to go on
living with yourself.
I moved out from where I was standing and headed straight for the
Viking character, keeping parallel with the long bar. I can't recall ever
having moved more rapidly, and I was well past the barkeep—he
was blinking and standing motionless, as white as a sheet now—
when the Viking character's voice rang out for the second time.
"You think you're better than the rest of us, don't you? Sure you do.
Why deny it? Who are you, who is anybody, to come in here and
strut and put on airs? I'm going to let you have it, right now!"
The blast came then, sudden, deafening. They were standing so
close to each other I thought for a minute the gun had misfired, for

Average Size didn't stiffen or sag or change his position in any way
and his face was hidden by smoke from the blast.
I should have known better, for it was a big gun with a heavy
charge, and when a man is half blown apart his body can become
galvanized for an instant, just as if he hasn't been hit at all.
Sometimes he'll be lifted up and hurled back twenty feet and
sometimes he'll just stand rigid, with the life going out of him in a
rush, an instant before his knees give way and there's a terrible,
welling redness to make you realize how mistaken you were about
the shot going wild.
The smoke thinned out fast enough, eddying away from him in little
spirals. But one quick look at him sinking down, passing into eternity
with his head lolling, was all I had time for. Pandemonium was
breaking loose all around me, and my only thought was to make a
mad dog killer pay for what he had done before someone got
between us.
Mad dog killers enrage me beyond all reason. Given enough
provocation almost any man can go berserk and commit murder. But
the Viking character had let a provocation that merited no more than
a rebuke rip his self-control to shreds.
The naked brutality of it sickened me. Something primitive and very
dangerous—or perhaps it was something super-civilized—made me
out to beat him into insensibility before he could kill again. I felt like
a man confronting a poisonous snake, who knows he must stamp on
it or blast off its head before it can sink its fangs in his flesh.
I was not alone in feeling that way. All around me there was an
angry muttering, a cursing and a shouting. If I needed support,
sturdy backing, I had it. But right at that moment I didn't need it. An
angry giant had come to life inside of me and we exchanged nods
and understood each other.
There was a crash behind me, but I ignored it. What was harder to
ignore was the barkeep straddling the bar and coming down
flatfooted in the wake of two reeling drunks who were lunging for

the killer with a crazy, wild look in their eyes. I didn't want them to
get to him ahead of me.
He hadn't moved at all and had a frightened look on his face, as if
the blast had jolted some sanity back into him and made him realize
that you can't gun a man down in a crowded bar without adjusting a
noose to your own throat and giving fifty men a chance to draw it
tight.
The gun he'd killed with might still have saved him, if he'd swung
about and started shooting up the bar. But I didn't give him a chance
to recover.
I ploughed into him, wrenched the gun from him and sent him
reeling back against the bar with a solidly delivered blow to the jaw,
luckily aimed just right.
Then they were on him, five or six of them, and I couldn't see him
for a moment.
I held the gun tightly and looked at it. It was still warm and just the
feel of it sent a shiver up my spine. A gun that has just been
wrenched from the hand of a killer is unlike any other weapon.
There's blood on it, even if no laboratory test can bring it out.
I didn't know I'd lost anything until I looked down and saw my wallet
lying on the floor at my feet. The energy I'd put into the blow had
not only sent a stab of pain up my wrist to my elbow. It had jarred
something loose from my inner breast pocket that had a danger-
potential, right at that moment, that could have turned the tide of
rage that was sweeping the bar away from the killer and straight in
my direction. Some of it anyway, splitting it down the middle,
causing the drunks who were divided in their minds about what he
had done to change sides abruptly.
In my wallet was a perforated card, all stippled with tiny dots down
one side, and it said that I was on the passenger list of the next
Mars-bound rocket, and that the Martian Colonization Board
clearance was of a peculiar kind ... very special.

The wallet had fallen open and the card was in plain view for anyone
to read. It could be recognized by its color alone—a light shade of
blue—and if anyone who felt the way the killer had done about
Average Size had caught sight of it and made a grab for the wallet—
I was bending to pick it up when a voice whispered close to my ear.
"Don't let anyone see that card—if you want to stay in one piece.
You'd better get out of here before they start asking questions. They
won't wait for the Spaceport Police to get here. Too many of them
will be in trouble if they don't find out fast where everyone stands.
They'll know how to go about it."
I couldn't believe it for a minute, because I hadn't seen her come in.
I'd noticed two women at the bar, but not this one—it would have
been impossible for me to have failed to notice so slim a waist or
hips so enchantingly rounded, or the honey-blonde hair piled high,
or the wide, dark-lashed eyes that were staring at me out of a face
that would have made a good many men with their lives at stake
forget the meaning of danger.
Even if she'd been wedged in tightly between two male escorts at
the bar, I'd have noticed a part of all that. Just one glimpse of the
back of her head, with the indefinable, special quality that makes
beauty like that perceptible at a glance, so that you know what the
whole woman will look like when she turns, would have made so
deep an impression on me that not even the violence I'd participated
in a moment afterwards could have blotted it from my mind.
It left me speechless for an instant. I just snatched up the wallet,
put it safely back in my pocket and returned her stare in complete
silence.
"Better keep the gun," she advised. "Your fingerprints are all over it
now. You could clear yourself all right, considering who you are. But
it would be much simpler just to toss it into Lake Michigan,
especially if they decide to let him go and lie about who did the
killing."

I could have wiped the gun clean and tossed it on the floor, but I
knew what was in her mind. You just don't leave a murder weapon
lying around in plain view when you've picked it up right after a
killing. It can lead to all kinds of complications.
I nodded and stood up. "Thanks for the advice," I said, finding my
voice at last. "There are enough eye-witnesses here to convict him
without this, if just a few of them have a conscience."
"Don't count on it," she said. "They're angry enough to kill him right
now, because they don't like to see anyone gunned down like that.
But when they've had time to think it over—"
She was right, of course. There were six or seven men struggling
with the killer now but there were others who weren't. A fight had
started near the middle of the bar and someone was shouting: "The
ugly son deserved what he got! Every man who gets a Mars
clearance now has to play along with the Colonization Board! He has
to turn informer and help them set a trap for anyone who gets in
their way. Just depriving us of our rights doesn't satisfy them.
They're scheming to get the whole Mars Colony for themselves."
It was the Big Lie—the charge that had done more damage to the
Mars Colony than the shortages of food and desperately needed
construction materials, and almost as much damage as the two
major power conflicts and the transportation difficulties that never
seemed to get solved.
I wanted to go right up to him and grab hold of him and hit him as
hard as I'd hit the Viking character, because he was a killer too—a
killer of the dream.
But the blonde who seemed to know all the answers and what was
wise and sane and sensible was tugging at my arm and I couldn't
ignore the urgency in her voice.
"Time's running out on you, Mr. Important Man. If they find out just
who you are, you won't have a chance of getting out of here alive.
Every one of them will be clamoring for your blood. The pity of it,
the terrible pity, is that most of them hate violence as much as you

do. They hate what that wild beast just did. But the Big Lie has
made them hate the Colonization Board even more. Do we go?"
It came as a surprise that she was leaving with me, and that was
downright idiotic, in a way. With the place in an uproar, a killer still
trying to break loose and a fight under way it would have been
madness for her to stay, and the two other women had vanished
without stopping to talk to anyone. But in moments of stress you
can overlook the obvious and wonder about it afterward.
We had to move fast and we ran into trouble when two struggling
drunks got in our way. I shouldered one aside and rammed an elbow
into the stomach of the other and we reached the street without
being stopped by anyone who didn't want us to leave. The card was
back in my pocket and not a single one of them had X-ray eyes.
In another minute or two someone would have probably
remembered that I'd disarmed the Viking character and could have
had a reason for the fast violent way I'd gone about it. Then I'd
have been in for the kind of questioning the blonde had mentioned—
a kangaroo court interrogation before the Spaceport Police could get
there. And if my answers had failed to satisfy them they would have
wasted no time in turning my pockets inside out.
I'd been spared all that, thanks to that same blonde. And—I didn't
even know her name!

2
We'd been talking for twenty minutes and I still didn't know her
name. She wasn't being secretive or coy or holding out on me
because she didn't trust me as much as I trusted her. I just hadn't
gotten around to asking her, because we were both still talking
about what had happened at the bar and it was so closely tied in
with what was happening in New York and London and Paris and
every big city on Earth—and on Mars as well—that it dwarfed our
puny selves—extra-special as the blonde's puny self happened to be
from the male point of view.
I didn't know whether she was Helen or Barbara, Anne or Ruth or
Tanya. I just knew that she was beautiful and that we were sipping
Martinis and looking out through a wide picture window at New
Chicago's lakeshore parklands enveloped in a twilight glow.
The restaurant was called the Blue Mandarin and it conformed in all
respects to the picture that name conjures up—a diaphanous blue,
oriental-ornate eating establishment with nothing to offer its patrons
that was new, original, exciting, unique.
But there it was and there it would remain—until Lake Michigan
froze solid. For the moment its artificial decor wasn't important to
either of us. Only the Big Lie and what it was doing to the Martian
Colonization Project.
"My father was one of the first," she said. "Do you know what it
means, to stand in an empty, desolate waste, forty million miles from
home, and realize you're one of the chosen few—that a city will
some day grow from the seeds you've planted and nourished with
your life blood?"
"I think I do," I said. "I hope I do."

"He died," she said, "when he was thirty years old, from a Martian
virus they hadn't discovered how to combat until two-thirds of the
first two thousand colonists succumbed to it."
"Why didn't he take you with him?" I asked. "There were no
passenger restrictions then. The Colonization Board had great
difficulty in finding enough volunteers."
"My mother refused to go," she said. "I'm afraid ... most women are
more conservative than men. Father died alone, and five years later
Mother married a man who didn't want to be one of the first ten
thousand—or the first sixty thousand. He had no problem. He wasn't
like the men we saw tonight."
"If every man and woman on Earth wanted to go to Mars," I said,
"the Colonization Board would have no problem. A demand on so
colossal a scale could not be met—in a century and a half. And laws
would be passed to prevent the scheming that's taking place
everywhere, the hatred and the violence. The Big Lie would not be
believed."
"I know," she said. "It's when only twenty thousand can go and five
million want to go that you have a problem. A little hope filters
through, and the five million become envious and enraged."
I looked at her. I was feeling the glow now, the warmth creeping
through the cells of my brain, the recklessness that alcohol can
generate in a man with a worry that looms as big as the Big Lie, to
the part of himself that isn't dedicated to combating the Lie. The
ego-centered, demandingly human part, the woman-needing part,
the old Adam that's in all of us.
And suddenly I found myself thinking of Paris in the Spring, and the
sparkling Burgundies of France and vineyards in the dawn and what
it had meant to have a woman always at my side—or almost always
—and in my bed as well.
New York, flag-draped for Autumn, London in a swirling fog, the old
houses, the dreaming spires, anywhere on the round green Earth

where there was laughter and music and a woman to share it
with....
All that had been mine for ten years. But now, like a fool, I wanted
Mars as well. Mars was in my blood and I could no longer rest
content with what I had.
Take it with me to Mars? And why not? It was no problem ... when
you didn't have my problem. A quite simple problem, really. The
woman I'd married wouldn't go with me to Mars.
She seemed to sense that I was having some kind of inward
struggle, and was feeling a decided glow at the same time, for she
reached out suddenly and took firm hold of my hand.
"Something's troubling you," she said. "Why don't you tell me about
it while you're feeling mellow. Considering the kind of world we're
living in, mellow is the best way to feel. It wears off quickly enough
and next day you pay for it. But while it lasts, I believe in making the
most of it. Don't you?"
Should I tell her, dared I? I might have to pay for it with a
vengeance, for she'd probably think me quite mad. And I still had
some old-fashioned ideas about loyalty and happened to be in love
with my wife.
It was crazy, it made no sense, but that's the way it was.
I looked at the woman sitting opposite me and wondered how a
man could be in love with one woman and find another so attractive
that he'd been on the verge of coming right out and asking her if
she'd go with him to Mars.
I looked at her blonde hair piled up high, and her pale beautiful face
and wondered how it would be if I hadn't been married to Joan at
all.
I shut my eyes for a moment, thinking back, remembering the
quarrel I'd had with my wife that morning, the quarrel I'd tried my
best to forget over four straight whiskies at the spaceport bar late in
the afternoon.

It was almost as if it was taking place again, right there at the table,
with another woman sitting opposite me who could not hear Joan's
angry voice at all.
"I mean every word I'm saying, Ralph Graham. You either tell them
you're staying right here in New Chicago or I'm divorcing you. I
won't go to Mars with you—tomorrow or next year or five years from
now. Is that plain?"
It was plain enough. To cushion the shock of it, and ease the pain a
little I stared into the fireplace, seeing for an instant in the high-
leaping flames a red desert landscape and a city that towered to the
brittle stars ... white, resplendent, swimming in a light that never
was on sea or land.
All right, the first Earth colony on Mars wasn't that kind of a city. It
was rugged and sprawling and rowdy. It was filled with tumult and
shouting, its prefabricated metal dwellings scoured and pitted by the
harsh desert winds. But I liked it better that way.
I wanted to walk its crooked streets, to rejoice with its builders and
creators, to be one of the first sixty thousand. With my mind and
heart and blood and guts I wanted to be there before the cautious,
solemn, over-serious people ruined it for the kind of man I was.
"I mean it, Ralph," Joan said. "If you go—you'll go alone. All of my
friends are here, all of my roots. I won't tear myself up by the roots
even for you. Much as I love you, I just won't."
It was five in the morning, and we'd been arguing half the night. In
two more hours daylight would come flooding into the apartment
again, and I'd probably have the worst talk-marathon hangover of
my life.
I suddenly decided to go out into the cool dawn without saying
another word to her, slamming the door after me to make sure she'd
realize just how angry she'd made me.
I wouldn't even switch on the five A.M. news telecast or stop to take
in the cat on my way out. Women and cats had a great deal in

common, I told myself bitterly. They were arbitrary and stubborn
and mysteriously intent on having their own way and keeping you
guessing as to their real motives.
By heaven ... if I had to go alone to Mars I'd go.
So I'd really hung one on, had gone out and made a round of the
lakeside bars. All morning until noon and then I'd sobered up over
coffee and a sandwich and started out again early in the afternoon.
It just goes to show what a quarrel like that can do to a man's
nerves and peace of mind and all of his plans for the future, for I'm
not even a moderately heavy drinker.
Early morning bar traveling is barbarous, a lunatic-fringe pastime,
and it was the first time in my life I'd resorted to it. But resort to it I
did, and as the day wore on I gravitated from the lakeside taverns
toward the spaceport in slow stages, and twice in five hours reached
the stage where I couldn't have passed the straight-line test. If I
hadn't sobered up a little at noon I'd have reached the big,
dangerous bar as high as a man can get without falling flat on his
face.
The Colonization Board hadn't even tried to stop what goes on there
around the clock, because there are explosive tensions and hard to
uncover areas of criminality in a city as big as New Chicago it's wise
to provide a safety valve for—when Mars fever is running so high
practically all of us are living in the shadow of a totally unpredictable
kind of violence.
If anyone had asked me toward the middle of the afternoon what
was drawing me, despite all of my better instincts, in the direction of
death and violence I'd have come right out and told him.
I had Mars fever too. I hated the Big Lie and all of its ramifications,
knew that every charge that was being hurled at the Colonization
Board was untrue. But I knew exactly how all of the tormented,

desperate men felt, the ones who fought the Big Lie and still had the
fever and needed to be cradled in strangeness and vastness—
needed space and a new frontier to keep from feeling strapped
down, walled in, prisoners in a completely new kind of torture
chamber.
The restlessness was growing because Man had lived too long in a
closed-circuit that had almost destroyed him. The great barrier that
was no longer there had brought the world to the brink of a
universal holocaust, and just knowing that it had been shattered
forever was enabling men and women everywhere to lead healthier
lives, set their goals higher.
There was nothing wrong with that. Only—not one man or woman in
fifty thousand would see with their own eyes the rust-red plains of
Mars, and the play of light and shadow on a world covered over
much of its surface with wide zones of abundant vegetation. Not one
in fifty thousand would have a new world to rejoice in, after the long
journey through interplanetary space. A world laden with springtime
scents, in the wake of the crash and thunder of the polar ice caps
dissolving.
Or possibly snow piled high on a sleeping landscape, with a thaw
just starting, and the prints of small furry creatures on the white
blanket of snow, for the first colonists had taken animals with them.
It would take another thirty years for newer, swifter rockets to be
built and the supply problem to be brought under control and the
colony to outgrow its birth pangs and its tumultuous adolescence
and become a white and towering city, as huge as New Chicago.
And there were some who could not wait, for whom waiting was
destructive to body and mind, a kind of living death too terrible to be
sanely endured.
The fingers of the woman sitting opposite me were becoming
restive, tightening a little on my hand. It seemed incredible to me
that I could have gone off on that kind of thinking-back tangent
when I was so close to paradise.

For paradise was there, seated directly across the table from me, in
that crazy twilight hour, if I'd had the courage to seize it boldly—and
if I hadn't been still in love with Joan.
I could still make a stab at finding out for sure, I told myself, if I
brushed aside all obstacles, if I refused to let my mind dwell on how
I'd feel if something happened to Joan and I lost her forever. How
could she have been so stubborn and foolish, when she was
sophisticated enough to know that no man is insulated against
temptation when he is lonely and despairing and paradise can be his
for the taking, if he can kill just one part of himself and let the rest
survive.
"What is it?" she asked. "You haven't said a word for five minutes.
I'm a good listener, you know. I always have been—perhaps too
good a listener."
It was the moment of truth, when I had to decide. Mars—and a
woman too. Mars—and the big, important job, and the clatter and
bright wonder of tremendous machines, with swiftly moving parts,
whirring, blurring, dust and the stars of morning, and a woman like
that in my arms.
I had to decide.
"What is it?" she asked. "Can't you tell me?"
"Someday I'll tell you," I said. "But not now. I've a feeling we'll meet
again. Where and how and when I don't know, because by this time
tomorrow I'll be on my way to Mars."
A pained look came into her eyes and she quickly released my hand.
"But we've just started to get acquainted," she protested. "You know
nothing about me—or hardly anything. I thought—"
"It might be best not to know," I said, and I think she must have
realized then just how it was, must have read the truth in my eyes,
for a faint flush suffused her face and she said quickly: "All right. If
that's the way it must be."

I nodded and beckoned to the waiter, hoping she wouldn't suspect
how vulnerable I still was, how dangerously easy it would have been
for me to alter my decision.
Ten minutes later I was alone again, with Lake Michigan glimmering
at my back, and only the stars for company. And I still didn't know
her name.

3
It happened so suddenly it would have taken me completely by
surprise, if the alarm bell hadn't started ringing again in some
shadowy corner of my mind. It wasn't clamorous this time, but it
was loud enough to make me straighten in alarm, with every nerve
alert.
I was standing by a high wall of foliage, close to the lakeside and
had just started to light a cigarette. All at once, directly overhead,
there was a rustling sound that was hard to mistake, for I'd heard it
many times before, and it had a peculiar quality which set it apart
from all other sounds.
Something was moving through the shadows above me, rustling dry
leaves, slithering down toward me with a dull, mechanical buzzing.
The buzzing stopped abruptly and there was a flash of brightness, a
long-drawn whining sound. I braced myself, letting my arms swing
loosely at my side.
With startling swiftness something long, glistening and snakelike
descended upon me and wrapped itself around my right leg just
above the knee. Before I could shake it loose it contracted into a
tight knot and the whining turned into a shrill scream, prolonged,
ghastly. It was quite unlike the scream of an animal. There was
something metallic, rasping about it, as if more than animal ferocity
was giving voice to its pent-up rage in a shrill mechanical monotone.
The constriction increased and an agonizing stab of pain lanced up
my thigh. I raised my right arm and brought the edge of my hand
down with an abrupt, chopping motion. I chopped downward three
times, not at random, but with a calculated, deadly precision, for I
knew that a misdirected blow could have cost me my life.

I was in danger only for an instant, and not a very long instant at
that. The damage I'd done to it caused it to release its grip on my
leg, shudder convulsively and drop to the ground.
Damaged where it was most vulnerable, it writhed along the ground
with groping, disjointed movements of its entire body. Tiny
fragments of shattered crystal glistened in its wake, and two long
wires dangled from its cone-shaped head.
Its segmented body-case glowed with a blood-red sheen as it
writhed across a flat gray stone on the edge of the lakeshore
embankment, and reared up for an instant like an enormous,
sightlessly groping worm. Then, abruptly, all the animation went out
of it, and it flattened out and lay still. Both of the optical disks which
had enabled it to move swiftly through the darkness had been
smashed. I was no longer in any danger and it was very pleasant
just to know that.
Very pleasant indeed.
An attempt had been made on my life. There could be no blinking
the fact. That little mechanical horror, with its complex interior
mechanisms, had been set upon me from a distance with all of its
electronic circuits clicking by remote control.
From just how great a distance I had no way of knowing. But I
didn't think he'd be staying around, near enough for me to get my
hands on him. Killers who made use of such gadgets usually kept
their distance, and were very cautious.
But at least I knew now that I had a dangerous enemy, someone
who wanted me dead. And there was nothing pleasant about that.
The human mind is a very strange instrument and it's hard to predict
just how profoundly you'll be upset by an occurrence that's difficult
to dismiss with a shrug.
You can either turn morbid and brood about it, or rise superior to it
and pigeon-hole it, at least for the moment. By a kind of miracle I
was able to pigeon-hole it, to keep it from standing in the way of

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