A Few Technicalities

Abstract

When protesting Chinese students were killed by the army in Tiananmen Square in 1989, their colleagues were able to challenge the official version of events. Despite the strict control over information exercised by the Chinese authorities, the students could reach the world’s press and television stations through the use of a FAX machine. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, Kuwaiti resistance fighters used FAX machines to give instant accounts of the experience of occupation. Without the technology, such tactics would have been unthinkable. This book is about how such thoughts and actions become possible through the interaction of politics and technology.