Your leaders like money more than you - A familiar story
Susan Douglas' book Inventing American Broadcasting: 1899-1922 is a remarkably informational historical account of the development of radio in the United States. The immense amount of detail provides for a highly descriptive work, while at the same time keeping its focus, stating only the necessary facts for the explanation of the changes in technology and regulation of wireless.
Douglas' attempt to argue against the notion of technological determinism is also successful through her references to the way potential innovations by amateur operators were limited by regulation favoring the interests of business and the U.S. Navy. She gives an in-depth explanation of how amateur operators developed early inventions in wireless technology, such as Reginald Fessenden’s alternator and Lee De Forest’s audion, and were the first to popularize the use of wireless and radio around the country through their large masses and their coverage in the press. However, problems with interference due to the amateurs’ widespread use, and sometimes misuse, of the technology, and the dangers amateurs posed to business and state control as “agents of etheral anarchy” (317), prompted Congress to enact the Radio Act of 1912, allowing them to use only “a portion of the spectrum then considered useless: short waves of 200 meters and less” (234) and essentially forcing them onto the sidelines.
Although Douglas does not allude to other ways in which the technology of radio could have developed, she does explain that the regulations beginning with the Radio Act of 1912 and continuing with the Radio Act of 1927 and the Communications Act of 1934, all of which favor big business over the rest of the public, could have been formed differently, with a greater focus on the importance of innovation and diversity. Instead of the implementation of these harmful regulations, a larger and more useful portion of the spectrum could have been allocated for unlicensed use in which amateurs could have continued to develop diverse forms of wireless technology, and could have kept some of the airwaves away from corporate ownership and in the hands of the public.