Information Ages: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Computer Revolution

By Michael E. Hobart

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801864127
• ISBN13: 9780801864124
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 8.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A novel history of information

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.