Alexander Longworth-Dunbar | The University of Manchester (original) (raw)

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Papers by Alexander Longworth-Dunbar

Like most rich English-speaking countries, by 2001, a significant proportion of people in the UK ... more Like most rich English-speaking countries, by 2001, a significant proportion of people in the UK had home Internet access. What was unusual about the UK, however, was that the vast majority of these people had gone online only very recently: for most of the 1990s comparatively few people in the UK were Internet users, and this number was growing slowly. Then, from late 1998, home Internet access took off dramatically. This poses two key questions. Firstly, why were levels of home Internet use so low in the UK for so long? And secondly, why did use levels increase so dramatically from late 1998?

In this thesis, I argue for the importance of looking beyond the Internet to other preceding and competing visions for mass market online services to answer these questions. I show how the slow growth in home Internet access in the UK was primarily the product of high metered telephone call costs, which had also undermined the growth of earlier online services. The roots of this problem lay in plans for a ‘cable revolution’ in the 1980s, strongly influenced by a vision of future online services as a form of interactive television and a desire to build new high-bandwidth communications networks, which established a unique model for the development of telecommunications based on competition in infrastructure. The persistent struggles of the cable industry in the UK critically undermined this model, and telephone call costs remained high, deterring significant numbers of people from accessing the Internet.

The accelerated growth in Internet use from late 1998, then, was the result of an innovation in Internet access pricing which reduced the cost of going online significantly. Eventually, the government began to address the high cost of Internet access in the UK, but only when it considered widening access to be important for improving the country’s economic competitiveness. Overall, I argue, this reflected how the Internet was primarily of concern in UK policymaking only where it was articulated as relevant to the country’s economic performance.

(Thesis submitted for my PhD from the University of Manchester in 2021. Passed with minor corrections.)

Dissertation submitted in part completion of an MSc in the History of Science, Technology and Med... more Dissertation submitted in part completion of an MSc in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester; awarded a distinction grade.

In light of a widely identified turn towards a negative discourse surrounding new communications technologies, there has emerged an apparent value in comparative analyses of the negative discourses that surrounded older communications technologies. For such an analysis the telegraph, as the first widespread electronic communications medium, presents itself as a valuable object of research. In spite of this, negative representations of the telegraph have so far received no sustained scholarly attention. In response, this thesis presents a history of negative representations of the telegraph in Britain and America during the period of its predominance in the late nineteenth century.

This thesis contends that strong resonances between the negative representations of these different technologies indicate the lack of novelty of many contemporary criticisms of new communications technologies, suggesting both the need for their highly critical evaluation, and the value of further comparative historical analyses of negative representations of
communications technologies.

Dissertation submitted in part completion of my BA (Hons) in History from the University of Manch... more Dissertation submitted in part completion of my BA (Hons) in History from the University of Manchester, and awarded a final mark of 80.

This essay discusses the history of popular cultural images of robots in the United States and Japan from the 1920s to the present, and argues against the notion of Japan as having a 'special relationship' with robots.

Instead, a close reading of Japanese and American popular culture suggests both countries' views of robots are far more complex and multifaceted than is often presumed.

This paper argues that the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army in Nanking, China i... more This paper argues that the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army in Nanking, China in 1937 ('The Rape of Nanking') were the product of three causes: the organisational nature of the Japanese military itself, the dehumanisation of ethnic Chinese and their relegation to the status of 'homo sacer', and the development of the popular cultural trend of the 'erotic grotesque' in Japan.

The atrocities committed, as such, were the product of this specific combination of preconditions.

(This essay was submitted in part fulfillment of an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Manchester, for which it received a first)

An analysis of the changes in the way those involved in the waging of the Hundred Years' War, fro... more An analysis of the changes in the way those involved in the waging of the Hundred Years' War, from kings to peasant soldiers, interpreted and conceptualised warfare itself.

(This essay was produced as part of an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Manchester, for which it received a first)

Like most rich English-speaking countries, by 2001, a significant proportion of people in the UK ... more Like most rich English-speaking countries, by 2001, a significant proportion of people in the UK had home Internet access. What was unusual about the UK, however, was that the vast majority of these people had gone online only very recently: for most of the 1990s comparatively few people in the UK were Internet users, and this number was growing slowly. Then, from late 1998, home Internet access took off dramatically. This poses two key questions. Firstly, why were levels of home Internet use so low in the UK for so long? And secondly, why did use levels increase so dramatically from late 1998?

In this thesis, I argue for the importance of looking beyond the Internet to other preceding and competing visions for mass market online services to answer these questions. I show how the slow growth in home Internet access in the UK was primarily the product of high metered telephone call costs, which had also undermined the growth of earlier online services. The roots of this problem lay in plans for a ‘cable revolution’ in the 1980s, strongly influenced by a vision of future online services as a form of interactive television and a desire to build new high-bandwidth communications networks, which established a unique model for the development of telecommunications based on competition in infrastructure. The persistent struggles of the cable industry in the UK critically undermined this model, and telephone call costs remained high, deterring significant numbers of people from accessing the Internet.

The accelerated growth in Internet use from late 1998, then, was the result of an innovation in Internet access pricing which reduced the cost of going online significantly. Eventually, the government began to address the high cost of Internet access in the UK, but only when it considered widening access to be important for improving the country’s economic competitiveness. Overall, I argue, this reflected how the Internet was primarily of concern in UK policymaking only where it was articulated as relevant to the country’s economic performance.

(Thesis submitted for my PhD from the University of Manchester in 2021. Passed with minor corrections.)

Dissertation submitted in part completion of an MSc in the History of Science, Technology and Med... more Dissertation submitted in part completion of an MSc in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester; awarded a distinction grade.

In light of a widely identified turn towards a negative discourse surrounding new communications technologies, there has emerged an apparent value in comparative analyses of the negative discourses that surrounded older communications technologies. For such an analysis the telegraph, as the first widespread electronic communications medium, presents itself as a valuable object of research. In spite of this, negative representations of the telegraph have so far received no sustained scholarly attention. In response, this thesis presents a history of negative representations of the telegraph in Britain and America during the period of its predominance in the late nineteenth century.

This thesis contends that strong resonances between the negative representations of these different technologies indicate the lack of novelty of many contemporary criticisms of new communications technologies, suggesting both the need for their highly critical evaluation, and the value of further comparative historical analyses of negative representations of
communications technologies.

Dissertation submitted in part completion of my BA (Hons) in History from the University of Manch... more Dissertation submitted in part completion of my BA (Hons) in History from the University of Manchester, and awarded a final mark of 80.

This essay discusses the history of popular cultural images of robots in the United States and Japan from the 1920s to the present, and argues against the notion of Japan as having a 'special relationship' with robots.

Instead, a close reading of Japanese and American popular culture suggests both countries' views of robots are far more complex and multifaceted than is often presumed.

This paper argues that the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army in Nanking, China i... more This paper argues that the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army in Nanking, China in 1937 ('The Rape of Nanking') were the product of three causes: the organisational nature of the Japanese military itself, the dehumanisation of ethnic Chinese and their relegation to the status of 'homo sacer', and the development of the popular cultural trend of the 'erotic grotesque' in Japan.

The atrocities committed, as such, were the product of this specific combination of preconditions.

(This essay was submitted in part fulfillment of an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Manchester, for which it received a first)

An analysis of the changes in the way those involved in the waging of the Hundred Years' War, fro... more An analysis of the changes in the way those involved in the waging of the Hundred Years' War, from kings to peasant soldiers, interpreted and conceptualised warfare itself.

(This essay was produced as part of an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Manchester, for which it received a first)