‘THE MARVEL OF OUR TIME’

Abstract

This paper demystifies contemporary utopian and dystopian visions about the social impact of the Internet by means of an analysis of the coverage of the introduction of radio broadcasting in Belgium in the radio amateur magazine Radio between 1923 and 1928. As technologists and first users of radio broadcasting, radio amateurs were not only close observers of technological developments but also attentive to the way Belgian society debated the social impact of radio broadcasting. This analysis shows the richness of the press as a source for tracing popular visions about new media in the past. Moreover, it pleads for a cautious approach to contemporary claims about new technology, for two reasons. Firstly, they seem to emerge out of patterns of thinking that have their roots in earlier debates about the introduction of past new media. Secondly, they present visions that do not take into account the social, economic, political and cultural position of future users.