Former FCC chairman Wheeler brings to life the two great network revolutions, the invention of the movable-type printing press and the telegraph. He puts these past revolutions into perspective of today, when rapid changes in networking are upending nearly every aspect of modern life and are laying the foundation for a third network revolution.

(Book). This third in a series of hardcover books joins the award-winning titles The Stratocaster Chronicles and The Soul of Tone by author/historian Tom Wheeler. In nearly 600 pages, The Dream Factory features hundreds of full-color photos of incredibly rare, collectible, and limited-edition handcrafted guitars. Learn how the Fender Custom Shop, originally intended to employ just two master craftsmen, grew into the most prolific custom instrument shop in the music industry. Features: * Foreword by Billy F Gibbons * More than 630 images illustrating the first master builders and their humble beginnings through the many changes up to present-day operations. Includes many one-of-a-kind custom guitar masterpieces and reproductions of acclaimed guitarists' instruments, such as Eric Clapton's Blackie, Jimi Hendrix's Monterey Strat, Stevie Ray Vaughan's No. 1, and many more. A must-have for all guitar enthusiasts! * Unprecedented view inside one of the music industry's most creative custom instrument shops, revealing how playable works of art are created * Fascinating interviews with the shop's founders, most of the first-generation Master Builders, all of the current Master Builders, other key craftspeople, sales representatives, artists' guitar techs, marketers, executives, guitarists, and many of the graphic artists, woodcarvers, jewelers, pinstripers, graffiti artists, pearl-inlay specialists, and others who have partnered with the Master Builders to create art works of stunning beauty

Believers need to learn to defend the Christian worldview.

In today's world of varying religions, it's becoming more important for a Christian to know what they believe and why they believe it. In Transformed Thinking, Tom Wheeler clearly lays out the most fundamental beliefs of Christianity and compares them to other worldviews, providing arguments to support his beliefs. Even though this book is purposed for the classroom setting, it would be a beneficial read for any believer who wants to have a firm foundation on which to share their beliefs with unbelievers. From the beginning of the world to the inerrancy of Scripture, Transformed Thinking will provide you with solid answers for your faith.

Transformed Thinking is a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge that provides foundational aspects in developing a Christian worldview.

-Dr. Brian Fairchild

D.Min./ Pastor, Colonial Bible Church, Midland, Texas

In the years I've taught high school seniors, Tom Wheeler's Transformed Thinking has proved to be truly effective in establishing and strengthening Biblical thinking in a world full of opposing views.

-Dr. Drew Conley, Ph.D.

Pastor for Preaching and Teaching

Hampton Park Baptist Church, Greenville, SC

Abraham Lincoln's two great legacies to history--his extraordinary power as a writer and his leadership during the Civil War--come together in this close study of the President's use of the telegraph. Invented less than two decades before he entered office, the telegraph came into its own during the Civil War. In a jewel-box of historical writing, Wheeler captures Lincoln as he adapted his folksy rhetorical style to the telegraph, creating an intimate bond with his generals that would ultimately help win the war.

(Book). The world's most famous guitar had a golden anniversary in 2004, and this official, authorized book/CD package offers the best photos, quotes, facts and sounds to properly celebrate this achievement. From Buddy Holly to Jimi Hendrix to today's hottest players, the Fender Stratocaster defines rock'n'roll for generations of fans and players. Special features include exclusive photos from the world's greatest guitar collection, as well as a CD with musical examples of famous Strat sounds and styles hilariously performed by Greg Koch even spoken excerpts from the author's interviews with the Strat's beloved inventor, Leo Fender. This book also recognizes that the Stratocaster's deeper significance lies in the music that guitarists have created with it. You'll hear what Strat players have to say about their instrument, their music and each other. The Fender Stratocaster both reflects and influences popular culture worldwide. The Stratocaster Chronicles focuses on the people who brought it into the world, the designers and builders who refined it, and the players who have taken it from there.

Hailed by Publishers Weekly as a potent primer on the need to rein in big tech and Kirkus Reviews as a rock-solid plan for controlling the tech giants, readers will be energized by Tom Wheeler's vision of digital governance.

Featured on Barack Obama's 11/3/23 list of What I'm Reading on the Rise of Artificial Intelligence

An accessible and visionary book that connects the experiences of the late 19th century's industrial Gilded Age with its echoes in the 21st century digital Gilded Age...

Hailed by Ken Burns as one of the foremost explainers of technology and its effect throughout history, Tom Wheeler now turns his gaze to the public impact of entrepreneurial innovation. In Techlash, he connects the experiences of the late 19th century's industrial Gilded Age with its echoes in the 21st-century digital Gilded Age. In both cases, technological innovation and the great wealth that it created ran up against the public interest and the rights of others. As with the Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age that it created, new digital technology has changed commerce and culture, creating great wealth in the process, all while being essentially unsupervised.

Warning that today is not the Fourth Industrial Revolution some envision, Wheeler calls for a new era of public interest oversight that leaves behind industrial-era regulatory ideas to embrace a new process of agile, supervised, and enforced code setting that protects consumers and competition while encouraging continued innovation. Wheeler combines insights from his experience at the highest echelons of business and government to create a compelling portrait of the need to balance entrepreneurial innovation with the public good.

Once again, Tom Wheeler makes sense out of the dizzying technological changes that often seem to initially befuddle and beset us before they come into sharper focus, a focus he brings to each page and each new idea. . . it sometimes takes an original thinker to make clearer the mess in front of us. Bravo! -- Ken Burns

Play The Harmonica Like A Pro

Are you new to the harmonica? Or

Would you like to learn how to play the harmonica like a pro?

Learning how to play the harmonica is much easier than you could imagine. This book Harmonica For Beginners provides you with a step by step guide on how to read standard notations, harmonica tab, basic lyrics, and chord symbols for well-known songs within a large range of styles. It contains step by step images that take you from exercises on the first day to playing together with backtracks.

If you've at any point said to yourself;

-How do I know the right harmonica for purchase?
-What are the parts of the harmonica?
-What does harmonica notations mean?
-What are the missing notes on the harmonica?
-How do I hold my harmonica?
-What does the harmonica playing position mean?
-How do I play single notes on the harmonica?
-Shouldn't something be said on scales, harmonica tabs, tongue blocking, and note-bending?

Harmonica For Beginners can answer all your questions and other basic issues. This is not an assumption, and there are no contrivances. This book provides you with all the answers you need to start playing your favorite songs on the harmonica.

Get the book and become a pro with the harmonica.

Network revolutions of the past have shaped the present and set the stage for the revolution we are experiencing today

In an era of seemingly instant change, it's easy to think that today's revolutions--in communications, business, and many areas of daily life--are unprecedented. Today's changes may be new and may be happening faster than ever before. But our ancestors at times were just as bewildered by rapid upheavals in what we now call networks--the physical links that bind any society together.

In this fascinating book, former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler brings to life the two great network revolutions of the past and uses them to help put in perspective the confusion, uncertainty, and even excitement most people face today. The first big network revolution was the invention of movable-type printing in the fifteenth century. This book, its millions of predecessors, and even such broad trends as the Reformation, the Renaissance, and the multiple scientific revolutions of the past 500 years would not have been possible without that one invention. The second revolution came with the invention of the telegraph early in the nineteenth century. Never before had people been able to communicate over long distances faster than a horse could travel. Along with the development of the world's first high-speed network--the railroad--the telegraph upended centuries of stability and literally redrew the map of the world.

Wheeler puts these past revolutions into the perspective of today, when rapid-fire changes in networking are upending the nature of work, personal privacy, education, the media, and nearly every other aspect of modern life. But he doesn't leave it there. Outlining What's Next, he describes how artificial intelligence, virtual reality, blockchain, and the need for cybersecurity are laying the foundation for a third network revolution.

(Book). Welcome to The Fender Archives part history, part archive, part scrapbook, and part treasure chest. You are invited along on a research expedition, a sort of archeological dig through several sites: file folders in Fender's offices; the family archives of Don Randall; author/curator Richard Smith's collections; the photo galleries of John Peden and Fretted Americana; jammed metal cabinets in a sweltering warehouse near the Corona factory; and the home of the late Bob Perine in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, just blocks from the beach where he and Ned Jacoby took now-iconic photos of high school kids, surfboards, palm trees, and chrome-clad rocket-ship guitars in Shoreline Gold and Daphne Blue and Candy Apple Red. The Fender Archives looks at the company from the inside. Handwritten letters, production totals, personal logbooks, in-house memos, Leo Fender's drawing-board sketches, financial reports-such documents are freed here from long confinement in cardboard boxes and filing cabinets, dusted off, and promoted from background to spotlight. The Fender Archives sheds new light on the inspirations for revolutionary instruments and amplifiers, their sometimes difficult births and growing pains, the environment into which they were unleashed upon the world, and the motivations and personalities of key players.

The Case for the Digital Platform Act is a new book from Harold Feld, Senior Vice President of Public Knowledge and longtime communications industry advocate, in collaboration with Public Knowledge and the Roosevelt Institute. This book aims to guide policymakers on what government can do to preserve competition and empower individual users in the huge swath of our economy now referred to as Big Tech.

Many Americans now wonder how they can reassert control over their lives after ceding so many decisions about our economy and our public discourse to private actors like Facebook, Google, and Amazon. But as Feld points out, we have faced similar challenges from new technologies before. Looking at more than a century of disruptive communications technologies from the telegraph to television to Twitter, Feld picks out patterns of what approaches have worked (and what hasn't) to promote competition, empower consumers and protect democracy. The Case for the Digital Platform Act provides a deep dive for policymakers on everything from specific recommendations on how to promote competition to a First Amendment checklist for content moderation, while remaining accessible to the general reader looking to participate in the debate over our digital future.

Feld explains the need for a Digital Platform Act and for an agency specifically charged to regulate digital platforms on an ongoing basis. He proposes a new method of assessing a platform's dominance for purposes of new regulation. He also addresses questions around content moderation rights and responsibilities for companies that have found themselves policing the new public square, all while preserving the best things about digital platforms for their users.

Praise for The Case for the Digital Platform Act

...] a tour de force of the issues raised by the digital economy and internet capitalism. Whether you agree or disagree with Harold, these thoughts will stretch your intellect and stimulate your thinking. -Tom Wheeler, Former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Visiting Fellow at The Brooking Institution

You'd be shortchanging yourself by not reading the book of such a principled advocate. -Hal Singer, Managing Director at Econ One Research, Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, Senior Fellow at George Washington's Institute of Public Policy

I'd bet you can't listen to Harold Feld talk about the Digital Platform Act and not think we need it as law right now. I'm glad Harold Feld and Public Knowledge are making the case for government to do the job Silicon Valley won't. -Chris Savage, Eclectablog

Believers need to learn to defend the Christian worldview.

In today's world of varying religions, it's becoming more important for a Christian to know what they believe and why they believe it. In Transformed Thinking, Tom Wheeler clearly lays out the most fundamental beliefs of Christianity and compares them to other worldviews, providing arguments to support his beliefs. Even though this book is purposed for the classroom setting, it would be a beneficial read for any believer who wants to have a firm foundation on which to share their beliefs with unbelievers. From the beginning of the world to the inerrancy of Scripture, Transformed Thinking will provide you with solid answers for your faith.

Transformed Thinking is a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge that provides foundational aspects in developing a Christian worldview.

-Dr. Brian Fairchild

D.Min./ Pastor, Colonial Bible Church, Midland, Texas

In the years I've taught high school seniors, Tom Wheeler's Transformed Thinking has proved to be truly effective in establishing and strengthening Biblical thinking in a world full of opposing views.

-Dr. Drew Conley, Ph.D.

Pastor for Preaching and Teaching

Hampton Park Baptist Church, Greenville, SC

Fourteen-year-old Sassafras Grove (everyone calls him Sass) has gotten into a routine of staying up late at night and sleeping until noon. With school starting soon, it was a habit he knew he would have to break. One night, long after everyone else was in bed, Sass acts on a moment of bad judgement when he decides to chase a cat out of the garbage. That ends with very smelly consequences.Sass' traumatic experience leads him, along with his best friend Munchie, to adopt a family of orphaned skunk babies. But there's a problem. It's expensive to raise animals, with feeding and visits to the vet, and even more so with fully operational skunks. Sass and his dad have struck a deal. He has one week to come up with the money to take care of the skunks or give up his new pets. Together, Sass and Munchie hatch a scheme to get all the cash they need, and a little extra, in one night's work. That turns out to be a much more harrowing experience than anyone thought. In the end, who knew that having skunks for pets would prove to be a huge benefit? Follow along on this fast-paced, nose-wrenching adventure with Sass, Munchie, and their striped bundles of fun.

GroBe Veranderungen in wichtigen Industrien bringen aufregende Zeiten. Die Computertechnologie hat in den letzten 40 Jahren viele Wandlungen erlebt, aber die aufregendste Wandlung bringt mehr Computerleistung zu den End- benutzem. Veranderungen der Verarbeitungsmoglichkeiten und der Kom- munikationsverbindungen haben die Moglichkeiten des Computers auf eine Weise direkt zum Einzelnen gebracht, die unsere Sichten auf die Geschafts- welt revolutionieren. Professionelle Benutzer konnen Vorteile aus den auBergewohnlichen Mog- lichkeiten ziehen, die jetzt fUr die Losung von Problemen zur Verfiigung ste- hen. Manager konnen geschaftliche Moglichkeiten erschlieBen, indem sie ih- re Geschaftsprozesse mit den neuen Technologien urngestalten. Die Fort- schritte der Computertechnologie haben es Firmen erlaubt, tibergreifende Teams zu bilden, die die Fiihigkeiten offener Systeme benutzen, urn innova- tive Losungen auf die Geschaftsprobleme anzuwenden. Wenn sie richtig be- nutzt werden, konnen offene Systeme wertvolle Werkzeuge werden, die unser Geschaft verwandeln konnen und uns helfen, einzigartige Konkurrenzvorteile zu erzielen. Wiihrend der letzten Jahre haben offene Systeme wachsende Aufmerksam- keit erfahren, weil die groBen Firmen sie als Strategie gewiihlt haben. Die Preise fUr Mikroprozessorchips und Speicher sind weiter dramatisch gefallen, was neue Moglichkeiten fUr Anwendungen eroffnet, die man einst fUr uner- reichbar hielt. Das kontinuierliche Interesse und die FUhrerschaft einiger Fir- men haben geholfen, die Industrie zur Implementierung von Standards zu bewegen. Diese ftihrenden Gesellschaften haben geholfen, neue Geschiifts- urngebungen zu schaffen.

This is the second instalment of four, Snow, Sand, School and Stress. It follows on from The Lads From The Pleasant 'B' Team. It is a fact/fiction account of workers employed on the construction of the Mount Pleasant airfield in the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean in the 1980's after the conflict there and then follows the fortunes of some of the workforce who move on to work in the warmer climes of Algeria North Africa.

The story captures the lives of the workers in both areas of the world, from the isolation, cold and remoteness of the Falkland Islands to the heat and dust of the North African country. It takes the reader, From Ice To Sand.