Technological Evolution and the Right to Communicate

This paper examines the co-evolution of information and communications technologies and communication rights. The emphasis is on the right to communicate. The paper provides a historical analysis through several generations of human rights developments of the inter-relationships between technical advances that enabled new communication modalities and the subsequent social and organizational interests that evolved. These communication modalities include bi-directional, interpersonal communications supported by telegraphy and telephony; unidirectional, mass communications made possible the broadcast technologies of television and radio; and bi-directional, many-to-many communications supported by the broadband technologies of satellite, the Internet, and the World-Wide Web. Three generations of human rights have been recognized in this context: civil and political rights; economic, social and cultural rights; and the emerging area of collective rights. PDF.