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Why do we find ourselves living in an Information
Society? How did the collective, processing, and communication
of information come to play an increasingly important role
in advanced industrial countries relative to the roles of
matter and energy? And why is this change recent -- or is
it?
James Beniger traces the origin of the Information
Society to major economic and business crises of the past
century. In the United States, applications of steam power
in the early 1800s brought a dramatic rise in the speed,
volume, and complexity of industrial processes, making them
difficult to control. Scores of problems arose: fatal train
wrecks, a misplacement of freight cars for months at a time,
loss of shipments, inability to maintain huge rates of inventory
turnover. Inevitably, the Industrial Revolution, with its
ballooning use of energy to drive material processes, required
a corresponding growth in the exploitation of information:
the Control Revolution.
Between the 1840s and 1920s came most of
the important information-processing and communication technologies
still in use today: telegraphy, modern bureaucracy, rotary
power printing, the postage stamp, paper money, typewriter,
telephone, punch-card processing, motion pictures, radio,
and television. Beniger shows that more recent developments
in microprocessors, computers, and telecommunications are
only a smooth continuation of this Control Revolution. Along
the way he touches on many fascinating topics: why breakfast
was invented, how trademarks came to be worth more than
the companies that own them, why some employees wear uniforms,
and whether time zones will always be necessary.
The book is impressive not only for the
breadth of its scholarship but also for the subtlety and
force of its argument. It will be welcomed by sociologists,
economists, historians of science and technology, and all
curious general readers.
James R. Beniger is Associate Professor
at the American School of Communications, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
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