Ithiel de Sola Pool was a pioneering social scientist, a distinguished scholar of the political process, and one of the most original thinkers in the development of the social sciences. Passionately engaged in politics, he continued his role of leadership throughout his life, building the MIT Political Science Department into an outstanding group. He organized international teams of social scientists and collaborated widely to develop the understanding of social change. He was a frequent adviser to governments as consultant and in-house critic, and a successful advocate of limits on government regulation. "Politics in Wired Nations" presents his writings on the social and political impact of different communication systems and new telecommunications technology. Included in this volume is the first study of trends in a global information society, and the first study of social networks and the "small world" phenomenon that creates new relationships and routes of informal influence and political power, both domestic and international. Pool's essays on the politics of foreign trade, the influence of American businessmen on Congress, and changeable "unnatural" institutions of the modern world (e.g., bureaucracies, mega-cities, and nation-states) are herein contained. Pool describes a nonviolent revolution in freedom and political control that is possible as the world changes from the era of one-way mass communications--targeted to national audiences--to a new era of abundant, high-capacity, low-cost, interactive, and user-controlled communications on a global scale. He discusses policy choices for freedom, the battlegrounds ahead, and the risks of government involvement in the regulation of new telecommunication technologies.

This book applies the approach of technology assessment to the telephone. The author's analysis forecasts the effect of the telephone on society and compares it with the reality. This book not only examines the social consequences of the telephone, but provides a model for future efficient assessments of new technologies. It documents a largely unknown piece of the history of American technology and anlayzes the requirements for success in technological forecasting.

In this study Mr. Pool has shown what is meant by the word democracy on each side of the iron curtain. He has shown the different connotations of democracy; where the emphasis is on freedom and where it is on the power of the masses. He has devised some new techniques involving a general theory of communication to measure the ways by which people in the East and West use the word.

Ithiel de Sola Pool was a distinguished scholar of the political process, and one of the most original thinkers in the development of an integrated social science. This volume focuses upon his contributions to the development of research methods that deepen our understanding of human behaviour. The book is divided into five parts treating the analysis of communications, computer simulation, forecasting, network theory, and the social sciences in political contexts. The first part considers the problems and possibilities of analysis raised by the unprecedented quantity of data made available by widespread and improved communications technology; what should be counted and how should inferences be made. Part two explores computer simulation in the study of presidential election patterns and how it can provide in-depth analyses of crisis situations in history. Part three focuses on strategies for predicting the future of international politics and methods to forecast the impacts of new communications technologies, while part four offers a rigorous analysis of domestic and global contact networks and the so-called "small world" phenomenon. Part five is concerned with external challenges to the use of social science to create more humane politics, including the question of value neutrality, ideology, "deconstructive" critical theory, and threats by government to the health of universities. In a concluding essay Lloyd Etheredge draws upon Pool's work to discuss several new ways in which the methods treated in this volume can be applied to contemporary social change.

Additional Contributors Are Mary Chapman, Barbara Conner, Barbara Lamb, Barbara Marshall, Eva Meyer, Elena Schueller, And Marina S. Tinkoff. Introduction By Bernard Berelson.

Ithiel de Sola Pool was a distinguished scholar of the political process, and one of the most original thinkers in the development of an integrated social science. This volume focuses upon his contributions to the development of research methods that deepen our understanding of human behavior.

The book is divided into five parts treating the analysis of communications, computer simulation, forecasting, network theory, and the social sciences in political contexts. The first part considers the problems and possibilities of analysis raised by the unprecedented quantity of data made available by widespread and improved communications technology; what should be counted and how should inferences be made. Part two explores computer simulation in the study of presidential election patterns and how it can provide in-depth analyses of crisis situations in history. Part three focuses on strategies for predicting the future of international politics and methods to forecast the impacts of new communications technologies, while part four offers a rigorous analysis of domestic and global contact networks and the so-called "small world" phenomenon. Part five is concerned with external challenges to the use of social science to create more humane politics, including the question of value neutrality, ideology, "deconstructive" critical theory, and threats by government to the health of universities. In a concluding essay Lloyd Etheredge draws upon Pool's work to discuss several new ways in which the methods treated in this volume can be applied to contemporary social change.

How can we preserve free speech in an electronic age? In a masterly synthesis of history, law, and technology, Ithiel de Sola Pool analyzes the confrontation between the regulators of the new communications technology and the First Amendment.