Scrambled Messages

This collection explores trends and cultures relating to electrical telegraphy and recent digital communications, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. It interrogates the ways in which society, politics, literature and art are imbricated with changing communications technologies, and what this might mean for human connection.

An exploration of trends and cultures connected to electrical telegraphy and recent digital communications, this collection emerges from the research project Scrambled Messages: The Telegraphic Imaginary 1866–1900, which investigated cultural phenomena relating to the 1866 transatlantic telegraph. It interrogates the ways in which society, politics, literature and art are imbricated with changing communications technologies, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Contributors consider control, imperialism and capital, as well as utopianism and hope, grappling with the ways in which human connections (and their messages) continue to be shaped by communications infrastructures.