Dr. Daniel Headrick will be speaking as part of the "Information in Society" speaker series. In addition to the lecture, he will participate in a lunch discussion and afternoon office hour, and the lecture will be recorded and archived online. All events are held at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois.

Lecture Abstract: When the colonial powers introduced telegraphs to and within their colonial empires, they did so in large part to tighten the control of the metropoles over their colonies and that of the colonial governments over their subjects. Telecommunications had another effect, however, namely it spread the news from distant places, thereby stimulating new ideas that threatened to undermine the colonial status quo. The hopes that the imperialists placed in the controlling powers of telecommunication have so far proved to be misplaced.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Daniel Headrick is an international telecommunications historian and Professor Emeritus at Roosevelt University. He is the author of several publications, including The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850-1940 (1991), When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700-1850 (2000), and the forthcoming Power Over Peoples: Technology, Environments, and Western Imperialism, 1400 to the Present. He earned a PhD in History from Princeton University in 1971.