At its very birth, the telegraph system became the handmaiden of commerce. These were the words of the National Telegraph Review and Operator’s Companion, a trusted industry publication written in 1853. Tom Standage’s The Victorian Internet is an exploration of Samuel Morse’s contribution to global communication. To the reader, it became clear that Morse’s invention was the foundation of the technologies that we hold so dear. These include our television, the telephone, and the internet. The telegraph was the basis of America’s electronic commerce operation. Morse’s famed code was the predecessor to today’s communications methods. Tom Standage’s own words:
I opened the freezer and for the first time, sealed cups of Daily Harvest outnumbered all other products. The prepared foods brand owned our freezer. A growing number of Americans will soon say the same. This report explains.
Think back to your youth. When you visited your local malls in in the 1990s or early 2000s, they resembled marketplaces of vendors and major retailers. It was a living and breathing brochure of SKUs. Back then, storefronts didn’t require special features, personality, or experiential qualities. Consumers were there to discover, to shop, and to transact. Today, the malls that are still ascendant are something different than what we remember. The malls that failed to evolve are crumbling beneath the weight of changing consumer preferences, personal technologies, and faltering specialty retailers.
