Customer Reviews

Information Ages: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Computer Revolution

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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.