Pelton, Joseph, Robert Oslund and Peter Marshall (Eds.) Communication Satellites: Global Change Agents. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004. Pp. xix, 387. ISBN 0-8058-4962-9 (pb.) $39.95.
How much have communication satellites helped create the global system that now defines all of our lives? According to the authors and editors of this compilation, quite a lot. At the beginning of his introductory chapter, lead author and editor, Joseph Pelton, states his case: "Satellites ... have made our world global, interconnected, and interdependent. Worldwide access to rapid telecommunications networks via satellites and cables now creates widespread Internet links, enables instantaneous news coverage, facilitates global culture and conflict, and stimulates the formation of true planetary markets" (p. 3). The claim is then detailed in an overview by Pelton, someone eminently qualified because of his almost four decades of technical and policy work on the industry's evolution. After this condensed overview of the changes that satellites have created and will continue to create, the book is divided into six more sections: technology; history and politics; business, media, and economics; impact on society; future trends; and synthesis and conclusions.
The Technology section contains three chapters with the first two giving an overview of the evolution of communication satellites from the very first experiment in 1958 through the current generation of satellites that carry DTH (Direct to Home) TV and satellite radio as well as broadband services for mobile phone users. All of the description of the satellites themselves, the services they provide, and the development of the institutions that controlled this development are provided in such abbreviated form that the reader who is new to the field may have difficulty grasping a solid historical sense of changes over time. Still, with some attention to detail, the reader would have a sufficiently solid basis for following the remainder of the book. The third chapter on launch vehicles is highly technical and may not be useful for most readers.
Robert Oslund, a co-editor and a colleague of Pelton at George Washington University, writes all three chapters in this section. The first treats the geopolitics of satellites as their development got started in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. These two presidents saw communication technology as instruments of foreign policy and were comfortable with having satellite development and operation in governmental, not private hands. This changed subsequently and there has been an increasing privatization of the industry over the years from 1968 through the Clinton administration so that today international communication operates under private ownership even though regulations are imposed nationally. Oslund also tries to show that although satellites are a radically new form of communication technology, they have inherited a century of technical developments and international politics from the first submarine telegraph cable after the Civil War. His third chapter on the role of the military in the development of satellite technology is brief but touches upon important policy debates over the role of television content in international satellite communication as well as work of spy satellites.
The three chapters in the Business section seem less coherent as a whole though they contain useful information. The first on satellites, Internet, and IP networking focuses on the risk and uncertainty of satellites as a business. It makes clear what previous chapters had highlighted, that fiber and submarine cable had taken over much of the high volume traffic among industrialized countries. The failure of the low orbiting satellites in the 1990s is just one indication of risk, but the lesson has made other satellite developments more questionable. The second chapter tries to demonstrate the benefits of satellite investment but the exposition depends on a series of brief tables without enough supporting argument to convince. The third chapter introduces an area where satellites have made major inroads in the provision of television news to broadcast and cable systems globally. Though the topic is important, the treatment is limited and perhaps out of place in the section on business and economics.
The section on Impact on Society of satellites is uneven. Pelton in the first chapter raises both the promises and the threats of 21st century developments and demonstrates that he has given considerable thought to both benefits and costs of continued innovations in satellite technology. In the second chapter, Pelton tries to outline the specific promises to the fields of education and health on a global basis. Even though he has personally been involved with these efforts, the chapter is based more on promise than on the concrete achievements of satellite communication, and the chapter is more an exhortation to use satellites for education and health than a useful outline for implementation. The third chapter by Mowlana is difficult to understand, and one wonders how it is related to the other two.
The last two chapters try to summarize both the promise and concerns that satellite technology raises for 21st century technology planners. In the Future of Satellite Systems, Pelton and two Japanese engineering colleagues provide a detailed set of designs for future satellite development. The issue is whether the world's private investors will choose to emphasize satellites or fiber optic cable for greater development over the next several decades. The authors do not answer that question but argue strongly for the benefits of the satellite option. In the final summary chapter, Pelton raises both the promises and the threats of satellites for the present century and ends with a question rather than a prediction: "The true question to ask ourselves--and our economic, social, and political leaders--is not about our information technology [satellites or fiber optic cable], but about our long-term and short-term values" (p. 357). He asks how any communication technology can enhance human learning, health, security, and general prosperity. Even though the book ends with questions, most of its content provides some basis for a positive answer for satellites at the beginning of the present century.
Emile McAnany
Santa ClaraUniversity
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