Work
His earliest interest lay in the study of rhetorical symbols of democracy. The source of his work was the analysis of speechmakers of totalitarian regimes around the world. His desire was to decipher the power and influence of words. However, he would always return to his fascination with technology and communications.
De Sola Pool eventually became the leading authority on the social and political effects of communications. In 1973, his name appeared in The Communications Handbook, which he defined the social and political effects of technological advances in a chapter called "Public Opinion." In 1983, Pool proved to be at the forefront of technological movement with his publications, such as "Forecasting Telephone and Communication Flows."
Pool was reunited with his former mentors Roger Hurwitz and Hirshue Inose to co-author the work A Census of Japan and the US. This would become one of his last forays into the literary world. He once again defined demand toward a global information society.
De Sola Pool was the chair and founder of the MIT political science department. He was often pulled away from MIT to advise the United States and other governments on various matters. In 1965, he wrote "The Kaiser, the Tsar, and the Computer," an essay about a computer-simulated international crisis. Later, his interest in quantitative analysis and communications would contribute to computer models to study human behavior.
The idea of freedom in all forms was extremely important to Pool. As a young man, Pool was a devout Trotskyite, though he quickly became disillusioned with this form of politics after seeing people's ideals used to take away the freedom for which they had initially fought.
Read more about this topic: Ithiel De Sola Pool
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)
“Peace can endure only so long as humanity really insists upon it, and is willing to work for it and sacrifice for it. Twenty- five years ago American fighting men looked to the statesmen of the world to finish the work of peace for which they fought and suffered; we failed them, we failed them then, we cannot fail them again and expect the world to survive again.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“What is history? Its beginning is that of the centuries of systematic work devoted to the solution of the enigma of death, so that death itself may eventually be overcome. That is why people write symphonies, and why they discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)