The History & Future of Telecommunications

"communications satellites will be much more important than sending man into space, because they will send ideas into space. Ideas last longer than men."
Newton Minow to President Kennedy

You may wish to check out Newton Minow's "Vast Wasteland" speech to the National Broadcasters Association in 1961. The wasteland he described was that of the three national broadcast networks. The wasteland today is conveyed over a vastly increased number of channels and many more networks and the content has changed somewhat (reality TV has replaced westerns, news as provided through cable news networks panders much more to special interests than did the network news programs of my youth) but the landscape is still waisted.