Is CNN running foreign policy by dictating which wars we care about? Are leaders' role being usurped by a media whose technology can communicate faster and more emotionally to an unsuspecting public? Johanna Neuman debunks the common wisdom that we are experiencing a revolution in communication technology's influence over political decisions. What she unearths instead is an unrelenting pattern of change whenever new media inventions intersect with the political world, from movable type to the Internet.

With a journalist's eye for detail, Neuman documents that each age thinks the technology that blesses its generation is revolutionary and unprecedented. Whenever a new media technology arrives, diplomats complain that their deliberation time is hastened, journalists boast that their influence is increased, and social commentators marvel that new technology will democratize all within its range.

Just as predictable is the second pattern: Each generation eventually absorbs the changes demanded by technology and finds other ways of doing business. New technology may shorten the time it takes the public to receive information, but in the end, political leadership trumps media power.