Information Ages: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Computer Revolution [Hardcover]

Professor Michael E. Hobart PhD (Author), Professor Zachary S. Schiffman PhD (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 1998

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 5,000 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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Hobart and Schiffman see what we call the "information age" as actually the third such "age." The first began with the invention of writing and the second with the development of the printing press. Further, they claim that the present information revolution, while creating much faster change than the other two, will actually have less impact on human thought and culture than its predecessors.

It is the first they find most dramatic, since "information" as we know it today is intimately tied to the invention of writing. By their definition, information is a human concept rather than something that exists in and of itself; information came into existence when knowledge could be stored outside an individual human's memory. Hobart and Schiffman trace the history of their conception of information through three eras: the classical, which began when oral traditions gave way to written records; the modern, in which printing brought information into the hands of the masses and allowed numeracy to shape human conceptions of reality; and the contemporary age of computers and cyberspace. This fascinating book challenges readers to reexamine foundational assumptions about information and the nature of knowledge. --Elizabeth Lewis

Review

"Grand intellectual history... What Hobart and Schiffman have achieved through this cheery analysis is one of the more decisive refutations of the various 'End of History' arguments that have been floated over the past fifteen years. Information 'ages,' they pun, but history lives forever." -- Matthew DeBord, Salon

"Far reaching and eloquent... Hobart and Schiffman follow the dreams, trials, and successes of such innovators as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Galileo, Turing, and von Neumann as they took advantage of three distinct ages of information." -- Publishers Weekly

"This is a most interesting book... the sort of book that will be read again and again." -- Choice

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (September 30, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080185881X
• ISBN-13: 978-0801858819
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,496,528 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A novel history of information, March 13, 2009

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Trevor Burnham (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Information Ages: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Computer Revolution (Paperback)

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.