Patrice Flichy offers a profound analysis of the social shaping and impact of the major communication technologies over the last 200 years. From the semaphore and telegraph to contemporary information technologies, through photography, the phonograph, the telephone, radio, cinema and television, the text focuses on the relationship between technological and social change. The growth of communication systems is examined in the light of the main contemporary technological and social developments. Particular emphasis is placed on four processes: the birth of the modern state at the end of the eighteenth century; the development of stock markets; the transformation of private life in the modern nuclear family, and the individualism of the late twentieth century. Exploring the interaction of technology and social context - for example, in the move from public methods of communication to more private and individualized forms - Flichy exposes the gap between the original conception of a technology and its end use after the interplay of political, economic and consumer forces. Accessible and wide-ranging, Dynamics of Modern Communication will be essential reading for students and academics in communications, media and technology studies as well as in sociology and social history.