Talk:The Victorian Internet

Coining of term
Whn was this term coined? I've thrown in "late 20th C" for now, but was it in fact late 90s or early 2000s?

"mid-1800s" -- surely if "victorian", this would mean midway in teh century? On wikipedia, 1800s is a decade preceding the 1810s. Could someone who knows which the article means to refer to please clean up? -- Tarquin 22:30 Oct 6, 2002 (UTC)

Means Mid 19th century, will fix dml


 * For that matter, did Standage actually coin the term? I've just checked NewsBank, and the earliest references I can find are August 1998, in articles about his book. Tearlach 10:56, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

We really need to expand this to cover some of the stuff that Neal Stephenson has been doing with the idea. 128.135.70.110 17:14, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Scientific American published an article in the early 1990s regarding this ("The First Data Networks"; January 1994; Scientific American Magazine; by Holzmann, Pehrson; 6 page(s)), which is possibly useful for comparing references. --203.14.156.193 (talk) 20:44, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose that Victorian Internet be merged into Telegraphy. In the end the 'Victorian Internet' is not an actual concept; its really just a device used to inform digital-savvy readers about 19th century telegraphy. From the article, it seems to be a term is used primarily in connection with Sandage's book.

It would be more appropriate if the idea of the 'Victorian Internet' were mentioned in the telegraphy article. A brief statement should suffice, written along the lines o,f "the 19th century telegraph has sometimes been considered today as a sort of 'Victorian Internet', which [did...] in a way similar to the modern Internet. This analogy has particuarly been espoused by writers such as Tom Sandage, and [etc]". theBOBbobato (talk) 00:48, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Oppose You missed the whole point of this article. While it is true that "Victorian Internet" is synonymous with "Telegraph", the focus of this article is and should be on the many things that were similar, and not on the fact that a new technology replaced an older technology. The present article should be expanded to include how the telegraph was successfully used in warfare and the Internet was originally developed by the US Dept of Defense for use by the military in warfare. And the telegraph spawned the telephone just as the original DARPANET spawned the World Wide Web. And the telegraph made it possible to make "wire transfers" of money, just as the Internet made it possible to pay for products ordered over the Internet. These and several other comparisons will make this stub article a full size article that would lose focus if merged. Greensburger (talk) 02:20, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, but so what? I really don't see how a few points of similarity between the internet and the telegraph merits its own article. There are many points of similarity between many things, but they don't all merit articles. If the comparison between telegraph and the internet has been made, then It should be mentioned, sure, but there really should be nothing more than the mention.
 * Even then, it doesn't really doesn't make very much sense, though, when you think about it. The telegraph is not solely a Victorian technology. It was still possible and normal to make wire transfers over the telegraph, and to use it in warfare, in the 1950s and 60s and 80s. The new forms of communication brought in by telegraphy were still possible on the eve of the Net. So why not call it also the "Cold War Internet"? Or the "WWII internet"? While we're at it, why not go further than the mere telegraph?
 * Why not call television the ”1950s Youtube”? After all, it allowed the mass consumption of audiovisual material half a century before 2005. Why not call the postal service the ”paper e-mail"? It allowed the comparitively swift and efficient exchange of messages. Or the Yongle encyclopedia the "Ancient Chinese Wikipedia"? They're both encyclopedias. Better yet, a call-in advice program can be called the "Radio Google". It allowed people, for the first time, the ability to solve their everyday issues electronically and immediately.
 * If it is shocking and stimulating to learn that people 150 years ago were able to transmit messages over long distances and conduct business over the wires, then it is only because because you didn't know about it before. Such things have been taken for granted for decades.theBOBbobato (talk) 15:00, 23 July 2011 (UTC)


 * The above strikes me as an argument for deleting this article, not for merging it with Telegraphy. If you feel this subject lacks merit, I think you should propose deleting this article. -- Pemilligan (talk) 18:08, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't neccesarily think that the subject lacks merit. I just think that the merit of the matter lies in the fact that it is a somewhat current idea (a book has been written about it, writers have referenced it, people have been interested in it), rather than the worth of its ideas, and it would do it enough credit to simply give the 'victorian internet' a brief mention in the telegraphy article.theBOBbobato (talk) 18:46, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

A stub article should not be deleted merely because it has not yet been expanded into a full article. Other books have made additional comparisons. For example, on the use of the telegraph for military messages, such as the book "Mr. Lincoln's T-mails" (T meaning telegraph). This stub has potential, so give it time to grow. Greensburger (talk) 03:35, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Global communication "just a quantitative shift"?
This edit added the contention that global, as opposed to earlier mere long-range communication had been "just a quantitative shift" too. To my knowledge, that claim is not made in the book. Admittedly, whether for a communications system greater range is a qualitative or quantitative shift is somewhat debatable.

I guess you could call a communication method's greater range a quantitative shift, but unless we were to distinguish between e.g. intercity and transatlantic telegraph infrastructure in particular, the wide adoption of telegraph communications, as opposed to earlier methods, was a qualitative shift. Also, while the range extension aspect to the telegraph is a quantitative metric, the much more common understanding of the change brought by the telegraph is that of a qualitative shift due to its immediacy. While not technically incorrect in detail, there is little point in adopting the uncommon understanding of a mere quantitative shift, since that reduces the analysis to the point of absurdity: After all, just about every qualitative change implies some kind of quantitative change also, once you get down to minutiae. So I don't think the contributed analysis really holds water, and as much as I think Wikipedians are often too quick to cry original research, this really is, however it pains me to say it, just some contributor's original analysis, which again, to the best of my knowledge is not in the book. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm not sure if it's useful or appropriate to leave a message on the relevant IP user's currently non-existing Talk page, so I haven't done that myself, but I'm not opposed to someone else doing that either, if appropriate. —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 20:18, 17 November 2023 (UTC)