James Beniger argues that the railway and telegraph networks of the 19th century can be understood as ‘information technologies’. On what basis does Beniger make this argument, and why were these technologies so central to ‘the control revolution’

With the progression of time as with most things in life, major changes take place in certain fields. When this occurs on a rapid speed more often than not confusion sets in when people are presumed to handle everyday tasks in a manner alien to what they had been used to in the past. Time is essential to enable people to slowly learn these new approaches so that they can handle them with comfort, understanding and ease and therefore to be able to comprehend the reason behind the change. When comprehension is lacking mistakes are made, confusion sets in and some cases we are faced with an uproar. An example of such crisis can be seen in the case of the implementation of railway and telegraph networks of the 19th century where by, due to the studies of James Beniger we can see that he argues this point in his research analysis on control revolution.
According to Beniger (1997), railway and telegraph networks at the nineteenth century are perceived to be ‘information’ technologies. ...