It was not until the advent of the telegraph that 
messages could travel faster than a messenger. Before this, 
roads and the written word were closely interrelated. It is only 
since the telegraph that information has detached itself from 
such solid commodities as stone and papyrus, much as money 
had earlier detached itself from hides, bullion, and metals, and 
has ended as paper. The term “communication” has had an 
extensive use in connection with roads and bridges, sea routes, 
rivers, and canals, even before it became transformed into 
“information movement” in the electric age. Perhaps there is no 
more suitable way of defining the character of the electric age 
than by first studying the rise of the idea of transportation as 
communication, and then the transition of the idea from 
transport to information by means of electricity. The word 
“metaphor” is from the Greek meta  plus pherein , to carry 
across or transport. In this book we are concerned with all