| Description |
xiii, 301 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
Introduction: Information Present and Past -- Pt. I. The Classical Age of Literacy. 1. Orality and the Problem of Memory. 2. Early Literacy and List Making. 3. Alphabetic Literacy and the Science of Classification -- Pt. II. The Modern Age of Numeracy. 4. Printing and the Rupture of Classification. 5. Numeracy, Analysis, and the Reintegration of Knowledge. 6. The Analytical World Map -- Pt. III. The Contemporary Age of Computers. 7. Analysis Uprooted. 8. The Realm of Pure Technique. 9. Information Play -- Conclusion: The Two Cultures and the Arrow of Time |
| Summary |
The late twentieth century is trumpeted as the Information Age by pundits and politicians alike, and on the face of it, the claim requires no justification. But in Information Ages, Michael E. Hobart and Zachary S. Schiffman challenge this widespread assumption. In a sweeping and captivating history of information technology from the ancient Sumerians to the world of Alan Turing and John von Neumann, the authors show how revolutions in the technology of information storage - from the invention of writing approximately 5000 years ago to the mathematical models for describing physical reality in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the introduction of computers - profoundly transformed ways of thinking |
| Notes |
Includes index |
| Bibliography |
Bibliographical essay: pages 279-294 |
| Subject |
Computers and civilization.
|
|
Information technology.
|
|
Computers.
|
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Information Storage and Retrieval -- history.
|
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Social Change.
|
| Author |
Schiffman, Zachary Sayre.
|
|
Bernard Hames Bequest
|
| LC no. |
98012764 |
| ISBN |
080185881X |
|
0801864127 (2000 pbk. edition) |
|
