FROM GRUNTS TO GIGABYTES: Communications and Society

by Dan Lacy

Among the things we'll find while traveling the information superhighway should be new public policies governing nation's - and the world's - ever-burgeoning communication systems.
In From Grunts to Gigabytes, Dan Lacy uses his broad knowledge of the field's history to explore communications systems of the present and the future, their social impact, and the policies that would most appropriately shape them in the public interest.
Throughout, Lacy discusses the relation of communications systems to the existence and social distribution of power, the structure of society, and the perception of reality. He traces the stages of human communication from the beginning of speech through writing, printing, commercial publishing, the mass printing and publishing of the late nineteenth century, audiovisual developments of the twentieth century, and the computer networks that send gigabytes of information quickly from place to place.

193 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1996

About the author

Dan Lacy was managing director of the American Book Publishers Council from 1953 to 1966 and later senior vice-president at publisher McGraw-Hill.

Lacy’s accomplishments took place on many different fronts over the years. During World War II, he was director of the National Committee on Conservation of Cultural Resources, established to protect libraries and museums from enemy attack. In 1951, he was detailed to the Department of State where he received the Superior Service Medal for his role in creating Franklin Books, an organization that worked with publishers in Third World countries to publish translations of American books.

At the ABPC, Lacy played lead roles in adopting the Freedom to Read Statement, creating the National Book Committee and National Library Week, ratifying the Universal Copyright Convention, and revising American copyright law. While at McGraw-Hill, Lacy was appointed by President Johnson to the National Advisory Commission on Libraries, and by President Ford to the National Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works.