Information history
Encyclopedia
Information history may refer to to each of the categories listed below (or to combinations of them). It should be recognized that the understanding of, for example, libraries as information systems only goes back to about 1950. The application of the term information for earlier systems or societies is a retronym
.
) and other European languages.
In the transition from Middle Ages to Modernity the use of the concept of information reflected a fundamental turn in epistemological basis – from "giving a (substantial) form to matter" to "communicating something to someone". Peters (1988, pp. 12-13) concludes:
In modern time the most important influence on the concept of information is derived from the Information theory
developed by Shannon and others. This theory reflects, however, a fundamental contradiction. Qvortrup (1993) wrote:
In their seminal book The Study of Information: Interdisciplinary Messages, Machlup and Mansfield (1983) collected key views on the interdisciplinary controversy in computer science, artificial intelligence, library and information science, linguistics, psychology, and physics, as well as in the social sciences. Machlup (1983, p. 660) himself disagrees with the use of the concept of information in the context of signal transmission, the basic senses of information in his view al referring "to telling something or to the something that is being told. Information is addressed to human minds and is received by human minds." All other senses, including its use with regard to nonhuman organisms as well to society as a whole, are, according to Machlup, metaphoric and, as in the case of cybernetics, anthropomorphic.
Hjørland (2007) describes the fundamental difference between objective and subjective views of information and argues that the subjective view has been supported by, among others, Bateson, Yovits,, Spang-Hanssen, Brier, Buckland, Goguen, and Hjørland. Hjørland provided the following example:
. An important introduction and review was made by Alistair Black (2006).
A prolific scholar in this field is also Toni Weller, for example, Weller (2007, 2008, 2010a and 2010b). A description from Russia is Volodin (2000).
Alistair Black (2006, p. 445) wrote: "This chapter explores issues of discipline definition and legitimacy by segmenting information history into its various components:
"Bodies influential in the field include the American Library Association’s Round Table on Library History, the Library History Section of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
(IFLA), and, in the U.K., the Library and Information History Group of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
(CILIP). Each of these bodies has been busy in recent years, running conferences and seminars, and initiating scholarly projects. Active library history groups function in many other countries, including Germany (The Wolfenbuttel Round Table on Library History, the History of the Book and the History of Media, located at the Herzog August Bibliothek), Denmark (The Danish Society for Library History, located at the Royal School of Library and Information Science), Finland (The Library History Research Group, University of Tamepere), and Norway (The Norwegian Society for Book and Library History). Sweden has no official group dedicated to the subject, but interest is generated by the existence of a museum of librarianship in Bods, established by the Library Museum Society and directed by Magnus Torstensson. Activity in Argentina, where, as in Europe and the U.S., a “new library history” has developed, is described by Parada (2004)." (Black (2006, p. 447).
Some people use the term information technology about technologies used before the development of the computer . This is however to use the term as a retronym
.
The Danish Internet researcher Niels Ole Finnemann (2001) developed a general history of media. He wrote: "A society cannot exist in which the production and exchange of information are of only minor significance. For this reason one cannot compare industrial societies to information societies in any consistent way. Industrial societies are necessarily also information societies, and information societies may also be industrial societies." He suggested the following media matrix:
and Henri La Fontaine
as the fathers of information science with the founding of the International Institute of Bibliography (IIB) in 1895 Institutionally, information science emerged in the last part of the 19th century as documentation science
which in general shifted name to information science
in the 1960’s.
Heting Chu (2010) classified the history and development of information representation and retrieval (IRR) in four phases. “The history of IRR is not long. A retrospective look at the field identifies increased demand, rapid growth, the demystification phase, and the networked era as the four major stages IRR has experienced in its development:”
Retronym
A retronym is a type of neologism that provides a new name for an object or concept to differentiate the original form or version of it from a more recent form or version. The original name is most often augmented with an adjective to account for later developments of the object or concept itself...
.
History of the word and concept "information"
The Latin roots and Greek origins of the word "information" is presented by Capurro & Hjørland (2003). References on "formation or molding of the mind or character, training, instruction, teaching" date from the 14th century in both English (according to Oxford English DictionaryOxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
) and other European languages.
In the transition from Middle Ages to Modernity the use of the concept of information reflected a fundamental turn in epistemological basis – from "giving a (substantial) form to matter" to "communicating something to someone". Peters (1988, pp. 12-13) concludes:
- Information was readily deployed in empiricist philosophy (though it played a less important role than other words such as impression or idea) because it seemed to describe the mechanics of sensation: objects in the world inform the senses. But sensation is entirely different from "form" – the one is sensual, the other intellectual; the one is subjective, the other objective. My sensation of things is fleeting, elusive, and idiosynchratic [sic]. For Hume, especially, sensory experience is a swirl of impressions cut off from any sure link to the real world... In any case, the empiricist problematic was how the mind is informed by sensations of the world. At first informed meant shaped by; later it came to mean received reports from. As its site of action drifted from cosmos to consciousness, the term's sense shifted from unities (Aristotle's forms) to units (of sensation). Information came less and less to refer to internal ordering or formation, since empiricism allowed for no preexisting intellectual forms outside of sensation itself. Instead, information came to refer to the fragmentary, fluctuating, haphazard stuff of sense. Information, like the early modern worldview more generally, shifted from a divinely ordered cosmos to a system governed by the motion of corpuscles. Under the tutelage of empiricism, information gradually moved from structure to stuff, from form to substance, from intellectual order to sensory impulses.
In modern time the most important influence on the concept of information is derived from the Information theory
Information theory
Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and...
developed by Shannon and others. This theory reflects, however, a fundamental contradiction. Qvortrup (1993) wrote:
- Thus, actually two conflicting metaphors are being used: The well-known metaphor of information as a quantity, like water in the waterpipe, is at work, but so is a second metaphor, that of information as a choice, a choice made by :an information provider, and a forced choice made by an :information receiver. Actually, the second metaphor implies that the information sent isn’t necessarily equal to the information received, because any choice implies a comparison with a list of possibilities, i.e., a list of possible meanings. Here, meaning is involved, thus spoiling the idea of information as a pure “Ding an sich.” Thus, much of the confusion regarding the concept of information seems to be related to the basic confusion of metaphors in Shannon’s theory: is information an autonomous quantity, or is information always per se information to an observer? Actually, I don’t think that Shannon himself chose one of the two definitions. Logically speaking, his theory implied information as a subjective phenomenon. But this had so wide-ranging epistemological impacts that Shannon didn’t seem to fully realize this logical fact. Consequently, he continued to use metaphors about information as if it were an objective substance. This is the basic, inherent contradiction in Shannon’s information theory." (Qvortrup, 1993, p. 5)
In their seminal book The Study of Information: Interdisciplinary Messages, Machlup and Mansfield (1983) collected key views on the interdisciplinary controversy in computer science, artificial intelligence, library and information science, linguistics, psychology, and physics, as well as in the social sciences. Machlup (1983, p. 660) himself disagrees with the use of the concept of information in the context of signal transmission, the basic senses of information in his view al referring "to telling something or to the something that is being told. Information is addressed to human minds and is received by human minds." All other senses, including its use with regard to nonhuman organisms as well to society as a whole, are, according to Machlup, metaphoric and, as in the case of cybernetics, anthropomorphic.
Hjørland (2007) describes the fundamental difference between objective and subjective views of information and argues that the subjective view has been supported by, among others, Bateson, Yovits,, Spang-Hanssen, Brier, Buckland, Goguen, and Hjørland. Hjørland provided the following example:
- A stone on a field could contain different information for different people (or from one situation to another). It is not possible for information systems to map all the stone’s possible information for every individual. Nor is any one mapping the one “true” mapping. But people have different educational backgrounds and play different roles in the division of labor in society. A stone in a field represents typical one kind of information for the geologist, another for the archaeologist. The information from the stone can be mapped into different collective knowledge structures produced by e.g. geology and archaeology. Information can be identified, described, represented in information systems for different domains of knowledge. Of course, there are much uncertainty and many and difficult problems in determining whether a thing is informative or not for a domain. Some domains have high degree of consensus and rather explicit criteria of relevance. Other domains have different, conflicting paradigms, each containing it own more or less implicate view of the informativeness of different kinds of information sources. (Hjørland, 1997, p. 111, emphasis in original).
Information history (academic discipline)
Information history is an emerging discipline related to, but broader than, library historyLibrary history
Library history is subdiscipline within library science and library and information science focuing on the history of libraries and their role in societies and cultures. There is today a tendency to broadening the field and to speak of information history...
. An important introduction and review was made by Alistair Black (2006).
A prolific scholar in this field is also Toni Weller, for example, Weller (2007, 2008, 2010a and 2010b). A description from Russia is Volodin (2000).
Alistair Black (2006, p. 445) wrote: "This chapter explores issues of discipline definition and legitimacy by segmenting information history into its various components:
- The history of print and written culture, including relatively long-established areas such as the histories of libraries and librarianship, book history, publishing history, and the history of reading.
- The history of more recent information disciplines and practice, that is to say, the history of information management, information systems, and information science.
- The history of contiguous areas, such as the history of the information society and information infrastructure, necessarily enveloping communication history (including telecommunications history) and the history of information policy.
- The history of information as social history, with emphasis on the importance of informal information networks."
"Bodies influential in the field include the American Library Association’s Round Table on Library History, the Library History Section of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions is the leading international association of library organisations. It is the global voice of the library and information profession, and its annual conference provides a venue for librarians to learn from one another...
(IFLA), and, in the U.K., the Library and Information History Group of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals is a professional body representing librarians and other information professionals in the United Kingdom.-History:...
(CILIP). Each of these bodies has been busy in recent years, running conferences and seminars, and initiating scholarly projects. Active library history groups function in many other countries, including Germany (The Wolfenbuttel Round Table on Library History, the History of the Book and the History of Media, located at the Herzog August Bibliothek), Denmark (The Danish Society for Library History, located at the Royal School of Library and Information Science), Finland (The Library History Research Group, University of Tamepere), and Norway (The Norwegian Society for Book and Library History). Sweden has no official group dedicated to the subject, but interest is generated by the existence of a museum of librarianship in Bods, established by the Library Museum Society and directed by Magnus Torstensson. Activity in Argentina, where, as in Europe and the U.S., a “new library history” has developed, is described by Parada (2004)." (Black (2006, p. 447).
Journals
- Libraries & the Cultural RecordLibraries & the Cultural RecordLibraries & the Cultural Record is an academic journal devoted to the study of the creation, organization, preservation, and utilization of libraries, considered as collections of the cultural record in the context of cultural and social history...
- Library & Information History (until 2008: Library History; until 1967: Library Association. Library History Group. Newsletter)
History of information technology (IT)
The term IT is ambiguous although mostly synonym with computer technology. Haigh (2011, pp. 432-433) wrote- "In fact, the great majority of references to information technology have always been concerned with computers, although the exact meaning has shifted over time (Kline, 2006). The phrase received its first prominent usage in a Harvard Business Review article (Haigh, 2001b; Leavitt & Whisler, 1958) intended to promote a technocratic vision for the future of business management. Its initial definition was at the conjunction of computers, operations research methods, and simulation techniques. Having failed initially to gain much traction (unlike related terms of a similar vintage such as information systems, information processing, and information science) it was revived in policy and economic circles in the 1970s with a new meaning. Information technology now described the expected convergence of the computing, media, and telecommunications industries (and their technologies), understood within the broader context of a wave of enthusiasm for the computer revolution, post-industrial society, information society (Webster, 1995), and other fashionable expressions of the belief that new electronic technologies were bringing a profound rupture with the past. As it spread broadly during the 1980s, IT increasingly lost its association with communications (and, alas, any vestigial connection to the idea of anybody actually being informed of anything) to become a new and more pretentious way of saying "computer". The final step in this process is the recent surge in references to "information and communication technologies" or ICTs, a coinage that makes sense only if one assumes that a technology can inform without communicating".
Some people use the term information technology about technologies used before the development of the computer . This is however to use the term as a retronym
Retronym
A retronym is a type of neologism that provides a new name for an object or concept to differentiate the original form or version of it from a more recent form or version. The original name is most often augmented with an adjective to account for later developments of the object or concept itself...
.
See also
- History of computer and video gamesHistory of computer and video gamesThe history of video games goes as far back as the 1940s, when in 1947 Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. and Estle Ray Mann filed a United States patent request for an invention they described as a "cathode ray tube amusement device." Video gaming would not reach mainstream popularity until the 1970s and...
- History of computing hardware (1960s–present)
- History of computer hardware in Soviet Bloc countriesHistory of computer hardware in Soviet Bloc countriesThe history of computing hardware in the former Soviet Bloc is somewhat different from that of the Western world. As a result of the CoCom embargo, computers could not be imported in a large scale from capitalist countries...
- History of computer scienceHistory of computer scienceThe history of computer science began long before the modern discipline of computer science that emerged in the twentieth century, and hinted at in the centuries prior...
- History of computingHistory of computingThe history of computing is longer than the history of computing hardware and modern computing technology and includes the history of methods intended for pen and paper or for chalk and slate, with or without the aid of tables...
- History of computing hardwareHistory of computing hardwareThe history of computing hardware is the record of the ongoing effort to make computer hardware faster, cheaper, and capable of storing more data....
- History of operating systemsHistory of operating systemsThe history of computer operating systems recapitulates to a degree the recent history of computer hardware.Operating systems provide a set of functions needed and used by most application programs on a computer, and the linkages needed to control and synchronize computer hardware...
- History of software engineeringHistory of software engineeringFrom its beginnings in the 1940s, writing software has evolved into a profession concerned with how best to maximize the quality of software and of how to create it...
- History of programming languagesHistory of programming languagesThis article discusses the major developments in the history of programming languages. For a detailed timeline of events, see the timeline of programming languages.- Before 1940 :The first programming languages predate the modern computer...
- History of artificial intelligenceHistory of artificial intelligenceThe history of artificial intelligence began in antiquity, with myths, stories and rumors of artificial beings endowed with intelligence or consciousness by master craftsmen; as Pamela McCorduck writes, AI began with "an ancient wish to forge the gods."...
- History of the graphical user interfaceHistory of the graphical user interfaceThe graphical user interface, understood as the use of graphic icons and a pointing device to control a computer, has a four decade history of incremental refinements built on some constant core principles...
- History of the InternetHistory of the InternetThe history of the Internet starts in the 1950s and 1960s with the development of computers. This began with point-to-point communication between mainframe computers and terminals, expanded to point-to-point connections between computers and then early research into packet switching...
- History of the World Wide WebHistory of the World Wide WebThe World Wide Web is a global information medium which users can read and write via computers connected to the Internet. The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet itself, but the Web is a service that operates over the Internet, as e-mail does...
- IT History SocietyIT History SocietyThe IT History Society is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research...
- Timeline of computingTimeline of computingThis article presents a detailed timeline of events in the history of computing. For a narrative explaining the overall developments, see the related history of computing hardware and history of computer science....
History of the information society
"It is said that we live in an "Age of Information," but it is an open scandal that there is no theory, nor even definition, of information that is both broad and precise enough to make such an assertion meaningful." (Goguen, 1997)..The Danish Internet researcher Niels Ole Finnemann (2001) developed a general history of media. He wrote: "A society cannot exist in which the production and exchange of information are of only minor significance. For this reason one cannot compare industrial societies to information societies in any consistent way. Industrial societies are necessarily also information societies, and information societies may also be industrial societies." He suggested the following media matrix:
- 1) Oral cultures based mainly on speech.
- 2) Literate cultures: speech + writing (primary alphabets and number systems).
- 3) Print cultures: speech + written texts + print.
- 4) Mass-media cultures: speech + written texts + print + analogue electric media.
- 5) Second-order alphabetic cultures: speech + written texts + print + analogue electric media + digital media.
History of information science
Many information science historians cite Paul OtletPaul Otlet
Paul Marie Ghislain Otlet was an author, entrepreneur, visionary, lawyer and peace activist; he is one of several people who have been considered the father of information science, a field he called "documentation". Otlet created the Universal Decimal Classification, one of the most prominent...
and Henri La Fontaine
Henri La Fontaine
Henri La Fontaine , was a Belgian international lawyer and president of the International Peace Bureau. He received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1913.-Biography:...
as the fathers of information science with the founding of the International Institute of Bibliography (IIB) in 1895 Institutionally, information science emerged in the last part of the 19th century as documentation science
Documentation science
-Introduction:Documentation science, documentation studies or just documentation is a field of study and a profession founded by Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine . Professionals educated in this field are termed documentalists...
which in general shifted name to information science
Information science
-Introduction:Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information...
in the 1960’s.
Heting Chu (2010) classified the history and development of information representation and retrieval (IRR) in four phases. “The history of IRR is not long. A retrospective look at the field identifies increased demand, rapid growth, the demystification phase, and the networked era as the four major stages IRR has experienced in its development:”
- Increased Demand (1940s–early 1950s) (Information explosionInformation explosionThe information explosion is the rapid increase in the amount of published information and the effects of this abundance of data. As the amount of available data grows, the problem of managing the information becomes more difficult, which can lead to information overload. The Online Oxford English...
) - Rapid Growth (1950s–1980s) (the emergence of computers and systems such as Dialog (online database)Dialog (online database)Dialog is an online information service owned by ProQuest, who acquired it from Thomson Reuters in mid-2008.Dialog was one of the predecessors of the World Wide Web as a provider of information, though not in form. The earliest form of the Dialog system was completed in 1966 under the direction of...
) - Demystification Phase (1980s–1990s) (systems developed for end-user searching)
- The Networked Era (1990s–Present) (search enginees such as AltaVistaAltaVistaAltaVista is a web search engine owned by Yahoo!. AltaVista was once one of the most popular search engines but its popularity declined with the rise of Google...
and GoogleGoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
)
See also
- Cranfield ExperimentsCranfield ExperimentsThe Cranfield experiments were experiments conducted by Cyril W. Cleverdon at Cranfield University in the 1960s to evaluate the efficiency of indexing systems. They represent the prototypical evaluation model of information retrieval systems, and this model has been used in large-scale information...
- Documentation scienceDocumentation science-Introduction:Documentation science, documentation studies or just documentation is a field of study and a profession founded by Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine . Professionals educated in this field are termed documentalists...
- Information science#History
- Information scientistInformation scientistThe term information scientist developed in the latter part of the twentieth century to describe an individual, usually with a relevant subject degree or high level of subject knowledge, providing focused information to scientific and technical research staff in industry, a role quite distinct from...