Starr argues that it is political and governmental decisions that primarily influence the development of the post office, telegraph and telephone during the 19th and early 20th century. While correct in some respects, this vision is too short-sighted as it forgets the impact that users (individuals and organizations) have had on the development of various technologies. It also overlooks the fact that users of the systems are able to influence the government, whether through voting or lobbying, and may therefore be responsible for the same decisions that Starr attributes exclusively to the government. Starr is probably right about the political origins of the Post Office as a technology, mainly because it is the only one of the three socio-technical systems to be owned by the federal government, although whether this was a decision is still up for debate purely political or even a response to public opinion why the legislation was passed that way. As for the telegraph, although Starr talks a lot about the influence of the bilateral monopoly with the Associated Press and, to a lesser extent, the interaction with the railroads, he doesn't seem to actually go so far as to say that the AP telegraph and the railroads influenced the development of the telegraph from an apolitical point of view. Finally, the telephone was greatly influenced by its users, both directly through the creation of independent telephone companies and indirectly through changes in government policy. As for the post office, Starr appears to be completely right. The post office system has been greatly influenced by government and political decisions. This is probably mainly due to the fact that... at the center of the card... tic decisions that Starr talks about so much. The decision by AT&T and the federal government to regulate AT&T is the most obvious example of this, and perhaps part of the cause of the legislation affecting the post office. We also saw that sometimes organizations could form symbiotic relationships with the socio-technical system where both the user and the system itself benefit greatly from mutual cooperation. The Telegraph showcases this principle with its dealings with railroads and, in particular, the Associated Press. In the end, however, the point is that it is never a single factor that determines the growth of such influential and widespread institutions as the post office, the telegraph and the telephone. Systems like these must always be analyzed from multiple perspectives to truly see why their development occurred the way it did.