Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages [Hardcover]

Alex Wright (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0309102383 | ISBN-13: 978-0309102384 | Publication Date: June 22, 2007 | 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)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book Description

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.

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: 9 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #462,684 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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, January 28, 2008

By 

John D. Daniels (Reno, Nevada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages (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!

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

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

By 

E. Schofield - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages (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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The history of information, March 18, 2008

By 

Robert C. Ross (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages (Hardcover)

Alex Wright is a journalist and an information architect who argues that networked information systems are derived from monasticism, mythology, print technologies and computers. All information systems are either nondemocratic and top-down (a hierarchy) or peer-to-peer and open (a network).

"An organization chart is a kind of hierarchy in which employees are grouped into departments. Other types of hierarchies include government bureaucracies, biological taxonomies, or a system of menus in a software application.... A network, by contrast, emerges from the bottom up; individuals function as autonomous nodes, negotiating their own relationships.... Democracy is a kind of network, so is a flock of birds, or the World Wide Web."

Wright argues that networks and hierarchies collide, spawn, and reinforce one another constantly. The Gutenberg printing press allowed for the wide dissemination of previously exclusive information. Today, publishing houses disseminate information hierarchically.

"Internet users continue to congregate in small groups that often take shape outside traditional institutional containers. While this tendency toward self-organization might seem like an effect of the Internet's democratic architecture, such behavior also harkens back to our deepest-rooted social instincts.... On the scale of evolutionary history, institutions remain a short-lived hypothesis. For tens of thousands of years, human beings have interacted as social animals, following unwritten norms strengthened by kinship, reinforced by the limbic responses that strengthen our personal relationships, and transmitted through the spoken word. Today, we are seeing those instincts returning to the fore, as people adapt new technologies to invoke the ancient, emotional circuitry that carried us through the age before the dawn of symbols."

Wright is a very clear writer, who covers a vast amount of ground in a very interesting manner. His "aim in writing this book is to resist the tug of mystical techno-futurism and approach the story of the information age by looking squarely backward. ... From the vantage point of the digital age, we can approach the history of the information age in a new light. To do so requires stepping outside of traditional disciplinary constructs, however, in search of a new storyline. ... I traverse a number of topics not usually brought together in one volume: evolutionary biology, cultural anthropology, mythology, monasticism, the history of printing, the scientific method, eighteenth-century taxonomies, Victorian librarianship, and the early history of computers, to name a few."

For a generalist reader like myself, this is an absolutely fascinating book. Of course, Alex Wright cannot be an expert in every single field he discusses. He provides a superb bibliography which, even better, he maintains on his personal website, so that a reader can check not only his sources, but updates as new information becomes available.

I wish other authors would maintain their bibliographies on line. This book is worth buying simply to reward Wright's initiative.

Robert C. Ross 2008