This book chronicles the metamorphosis of videotape from its beginnings nearly 35 years ago as a media technology controlled by a handful of television executives, to a popular communications agent which is profoundly altering the way America consumes information and entertainment. The authors analyze videotape technology and its impact on the broadcasting and advertising communities, the home video market, and the private sector. Well documented and accessible to the general reader, Shifting Time and Space tells the fascinating story of how videotape revolutionized the content and style of the $12 billion broadcast and satellite-delivered television industries and brought about the $17 billion home video market.

Thirty-four years ago videotape entered America's consciousness. Starting from its first practical demonstration in a crowded hotel room in Chicago, it metamorphosed into a powerful media technology which forever altered America's sense of reality.

Shifting Time and Space was written to chronicle the metamorphosis of videotape from a media technology that was closely controlled by a handful of television executives, to a popular communications agent which has profoundly altered the way America consumes information and entertainment, transfers information, and exchanges ideas. The book evolved from our shared fascination with videotape's pivotal role in the development of modern communications systems, and its relationship to previously established forms of media.

It is this broad historical perspective of media, born and nurtured during our doctoral studies in the Media Ecology Program at New York University, that serves as a locus in the process of writing this book. While our names as authors are listed alphabetically as an elegant solution to the dilemma of prioritizing the attribution of credit, Shifting Time and Space is a truly balanced, collaborative effort.

Videotape has become the papyrus of modern times. Here are some of the diverse ways it is used today: