On 2009-03-13 Trevor Burnham, Ann Arbor, MI wrote: Hobart and Schiffman have pioneered a new view of history, describing the inventions of literacy, numeracy and mechanical computation as distinguishing three eras of human achievement. They present their evidence clearly, and I finished the book feeling that I had gained a better understanding of civilization, as well as of the evolution of mathematics (which is of particular interest to me). The closing chapter is an enjoyable glimpse into the future, in which the authors conjecture that cellular automata (such as those described in Wolfram´s controversial A New Kind of Science) may be the next turning point.
Still, this book is often frustrating. One particularly galling thing is the authors´ stubborn refusal to define the word ´information,´ allowing them to use it however they like, making various non-falsifiable claims. For instance, the authors assert at one point that before the invention of writing, there was no such thing as information. Later, they say that the analytic methods devised by René Descartes were a ´new way of informing.´ What do they mean by this? It´s unclear. Had the authors better defined their terminology, this book would have been both an easier and a more enlightening read. Instead, I recommend it with reservations: Information Ages is a challenge, but will reward those who persist.. And summed up by saying A novel history of information. Currently Information Ages: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Computer Revolution has an overall rating of 8 over 10.
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The Johns Hopkins University Press claimed ´INFORMATION AGES is extraordinarily timely in every sense of the word. There is no work available to my knowledge that summarizes so succinctly the relations between knowledge and its media over the entire span of human history. This book bridges, on the one hand, recent debates on print culture and the history of the book, and on the other, our current situation in a computer-dominated information age a phrase the authors succeed in putting into clearer context.´ D. R. Woolf, Dalhousie University How does knowledge become information? Does information have a history? And in what ways have information technologies transformed ways of thinking throughout human history? The answers to these provocative questions lie at the heart of INFORMATION AGES: LITERACY, NUMERACY, AND THE COMPUTER REVOLUTION, a sweeping history of information technology from dawn of human civilization to the latest developments in computer science. While ours is widely considered the Information Age, authors Michael E. Hobart and Zachary S. Schiffman identify three information ages over the course of human history, each defined by a unique technological development which permitted knowledge to be stored, manipulated, and transmitted. Fifty-two hundred years ago in Mesopotamia, the invention of writing gave birth to information itself. Forty-seven hundred years later, the information explosion precipitated by the Gutenberg revolution demanded the invention of a new, concise symbolic language that would allow for a more efficient utilization of knowledge: mathematics. And only fifty years ago, the introduction of the electronic computer inaugurated a third age in which information has become a world unto itself. In clear, straightforward language, INFORMATION AGES leads readers on a historical detective story into the origins of civilization and the development of human thought, for the authors contend that the media which convert knowledge into information also shape knowledge itself. From the cuneiform characters inscribed upon clay tablets by the ancient Sumerians to the Cartesian coordinate system to the microchip, different information technologies can single out different aspects of reality in different ways. Writing, for example, has forced thinkers since ancient Greece to consider the relationship between reality and its representation through words (giving rise to natural philosophy), while the computational speed of computers made possible the development of chaos theory. INFORMATION AGES offers the general reader an accessible and engaging history of science which highlights interrelations between technology and culture from the beginning of human history to the cutting edge of computer science.
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