Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages [Hardcover]

Alex Wright (Author), Joseph Henry Press (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 22, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0309102383 | ISBN-13: 978-0309102384 | Edition: annotated edition

What do primordial bacteria, medieval alchemists, and the World Wide Web have to do with each other? This fascinating exploration of how information systems emerge takes readers on a provocative journey through the history of the information age.

Today's "information explosion" may seem like an acutely modern phenomenon, but we are not the first generation—nor even the first species—to wrestle with the problem of information overload. Long before the advent of computers, human beings were collecting, storing, and organizing information: from Ice Age taxonomies to Sumerian archives, Greek libraries to Dark Age monasteries.

Today, we stand at a precipice, as our old systems struggle to cope with what designer Richard Saul Wurman called a "tsunami of data." With some historical perspective, however, we can begin to understand our predicament not just as the result of technological change, but as the latest chapter in an ancient story that we are only beginning to understand.

Spanning disciplines from evolutionary theory and cultural anthropology to the history of books, libraries, and computer science, writer and information architect Alex Wright weaves an intriguing narrative that connects such seemingly far-flung topics as insect colonies, Stone Age jewelry, medieval monasteries, Renaissance encyclopedias, early computer networks, and the World Wide Web. Finally, he pulls these threads together to reach a surprising conclusion, suggesting that the future of the information age may lie deep in our cultural past.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

To counter the billions of pixels that have been spent on the rise of the seemingly unique World Wide Web, journalist and information architect Wright delivers a fascinating tour of the many ways that humans have collected, organized and shared information for more than 100,000 years to show how the information age started long before microchips or movable type. A self-described generalist who displays an easy familiarity with evolutionary biology and cultural anthropology as well as computer science and technology, Wright explores the many and varied roots of the Web, including how the structure of family relationships from Greek times, among others, has exerted a profound influence on the shape and structure of human information systems. He discusses how the violent history of libraries is the best lesson in how hierarchical systems collapse and give rise to new systems, and how the new technology of the book introduced the notion of random access to information. And he focuses on the work of many now obscure information-gathering pioneers such as John Wilkins and his Universal Categories and Paul Otlet, the Internet's forgotten forefather, who anticipated many of the problems bedeviling the Web today. (June)
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Review

"Alex Wright delivers a fascinating tour of the many ways that humans have collected, organized, and shared information to show how the information age started long before microchips or movable type."—Publishers Weekly

"This stimulating book offers much opportunity to reflect on the nature and long history of information management as a damper to the panic or the elation we may variously feel as we face ever greater scales of information overload."—Nature

"Glut is a penetrating and highly entertaining meditation on our information age and its historical roots. Alex Wright argues that now is the time to take a hard look at how we have communicated with one another since coming down from the trees, because the way we organize knowledge determines much about how we live."—Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Glut is a readable romp through the history of information processing. Wright argues that advances in information technology have always sparked conflict between written and oral traditions."—New Scientist

"Glut defies classification. From Incan woven threads to Wikipedia, Alex Wright shows us that humans have been attempting to fix categories upon the world throughout history, and that organizing information is a fundamental part of what makes us human. Many books tell you how to organizing things—this one tells you why we do it."—Paul Ford, Associate Editor, Harper's Magazine

"Information technology is part of what makes us human, and its story is our own. In this masterfully written book, Alex Wright traces the roots of the IT Revolution deep into human prehistory, showing how our lives are intimately bound up with the 'escalating fugue' of information technology."—Louis Rosenfeld, coauthor of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web

"We have no idea how to handle the upcoming explosion of information. I found Alex Wright's quick, clear history of past methods for managing oceans of information to be a handy clue to where we are going. He introduces you to an ecosystem of information organizations far more complex and interesting than the mere 'search' tool."—Kevin Kelly, author of Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World

"This is a must-read for anybody who wants to understand where we've been and where we're going. A lucid, exciting book full of flashes of surprise about how we've done it all before: prehistoric beads as networking aids, third-century random access systems, seventh-century Irish monastic bloggers, eleventh-century multimedia, sixteenth-century hypertext. I wish I'd written it!"—James Burke, author of American Connections: The Founding Fathers Networked

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: Joseph Henry Press; annotated edition edition (June 22, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0309102383
• ISBN-13: 978-0309102384
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #873,629 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a writer and information architect who currently works for the New York Times. Over the years I have written for Salon.com, Harvard Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, The Believer and Utne Reader, among others. I have also worked as an information architect for a number of organizations including Yahoo!, Microsoft, IBM, Sun Microsystems, the Internet Archive and the Long Now Foundation. My first book, Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages, was published by Joseph Henry Press in 2007. I earned a B.A. in English and American Literature from Brown University, and an M.S. in Library and Information Science from Simmons College. I currently live in New York City.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating January 28, 2008

By John D. Daniels

Format:Hardcover

Alex Wright is an information architect and a self-styled generalist. He uses biology, neurology, culture, mythology, history, library science, and information science to trace information from the Ice Age to What is wrong with today's Internet and he does this in 252 pgs. (+notes, appendicies, and index)!

The book never makes the reader feel pressured by it's condensed nature. Instead the pace allows for a tapestry of colorful characters and events. There is plenty of material for the average reader to have familiarity with and lots of interesting new facets of information to discover.

The appendicies: John Wilkin's Universal Catagories, Thomas Jefferson's 1783 Catalog of Books, The Dewey Decimal System, and S.R. Ranganathan's Colon Classification, give some idea of the range and depth of the topics covered. An error on pg. 188 lists Appendix E for the current Universal Decimal Classification. This appendix does not exist. This still did not deter me from rating the book 5 Stars. This was the most interesting book that I read in 2007!

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent look at information November 6, 2007

By E. Schofield

Format:Hardcover

I am a graphic designer working on a thesis in information graphics. This book is easily the best book I have read in the course of my research. The style is quick and engaging. The information moves from a biologic look at how evolution may have driven the way we separate and categorize information - To historic looks at how information has been used. It is not specifically targeted at designers like Tufte's work, but I would recommend it for anyone interested in an overview of how information is used.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Good start doesn't carry through April 3, 2008

By Keith Frampton

Format:Hardcover

I looked forward to this book with much anticipation and for the first half I was not disappointed. The descriptions of different approaches for managing information through the ages were both interesting and useful as a comparison point for current topics. However, once the book got into the 20th century I found that the coverage was both simplistic and also patchy. The examples and `history of information management, storage and representation in the computer age in particular were very web/hypertext specific and ignored many areas of progress and solutions from the corporate arena. I also found that there was a paucity of useful suggestions for what may be appropriate to address the problem with the book representing a viewpoint that the web will fix itself and everything which seems naďve.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The first book that made me feel good about the field of librarianship! August 16, 2010

By Getaneh Agegn Alemu

Format:Paperback

Wright's beautifully written book, Glut is the right book for you. Among other things, this book is a deeper exploration of the rich history of traditional information revolutions and how networks and hierarchies have co-existed for millennia mutually shaping each other. As Wright notes, the contributions of librarians from Callimachus (Library of Alexandria) in the 3rd Century BC to Cutter and Dewey in the 19th Century to Paul Otlet (the Mundaneum) and Eugene Garfield (precursor of bibliometrics and page ranking), in the 20th century A.D. to the present information organisation systems including the web has been phenomenon. The stories are fascinating.

Central to Wright's discussion is the role of libraries and librarians who contributed greatly such as Paul Otlet, who as Wright persuasively argues, envisioned today's web in the 1930's, well before Vannavar Bush. Wright discusses in great detail how Otlet's contributions could be on par with that of Vannevar Bush and Ted Nelson, all forbearers to Tim Berners-Lee's web. Important in this regard is the part of the discussion in the book on how Otlet came to conclude that catalogues and indexes available at the time could only guide the reader "as far as the individual book" but not to the relationship of the contents in other books; then Otlet saw the possibility of creating semantic links between documents (the "réseau").

The book is an important read for information architects, librarians and anyone interested about the web. It main contention is that hierarchies (traditional information organisation systems such as taxonomies) vis-à-vis networks (traditional tribal folk-categorisation systems and today's folksonomies) are not in opposition. Instead, as Wright argues, they complement each other.... I think it is an interesting balance between ontologies and web 2.0 approaches. Read more ›

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Get Glut December 21, 2007

By S. Gordon

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have a lot of books in my `to read' pile, but Glut went straight to the top. I knew it was going to be well researched and insightful, but I was surprised at how much fun I had reading it. I'm a big fan of arcane knowledge and quotable tidbits, and this book was full of both. Thanks to Alex for unearthing this knowledge that I now dispense liberally.

Hard to think of a page-turner in the field of information management, but one exists, and Alex Wright wrote it.

I'm not a big one for building a personal library. i usually read a book, then gift to a friend with the condition that they then pass it on. In this case, you may borrow my copy of Glut, but it needs to be returned to me. It's earned a spot on my bookshelf!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful & profound history of information and its management. July 4, 2010

By D. Weisman

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Starting with the simple algorithmic rules behind the cathedral like architectural masterpieces of termites and progressing to the Science Citation Index and Google, Wright constructs a broad sweep of the history of information and information management allowing the reader to draw his or her own conclusions as to how we will manage the information overload of the nascent knowledge revolution. As insightful as it is profound, this book is a must read for anyone looking to understand the history and future of information management.