Description
Book SynopsisInformation: A Reader provides an introduction to the concept of information in historical, literary, and cultural studies. It features excerpts from more than forty texts by theorists and critics who have helped establish the notion of the “information age” or expand upon it.
Trade ReviewInformation: A Reader is a compelling read both for those familiar with the concept of information and those new to the field. Keen editorial intelligence suffuses each section and selection of the anthology, along with generous, insightful commentaries that reframe our understandings of these foundational texts. I found myself reading the book from cover to cover, revising my understanding of what I thought were familiar writings and happily surprised by textual juxtapositions that manifest the secret history of information. -- Jack W. Chen, coeditor of
Literary Information in China: A History"Information" has famously been defined as something that "makes a difference." This book, assembling critical readings from across numerous academic frontiers into a unified corpus, undoubtedly will make a significant difference, supporting innovative and important humanistic research around the topic of information for many years to come. -- Paul Duguid, coeditor of
Information: A Historical CompanionSuperbly compiled, the reader brings together several clusters of important primary sources from diverse disciplinary perspectives including communication theory, philosophy, political science, media studies, and literary criticism. A number of unexpected juxtapositions emerge as a result, amounting to a remarkably coherent commentary—a master class—on the concept of information in the humanities. -- Dennis Yi Tenen, author of
Plain Text: The Poetics of ComputationA superb compilation whether one is familiar with or totally new to writings about information and society. * Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology *
Table of ContentsAn Introduction
The Shannon Knot1. Claude Shannon, from
A Mathematical Theory of Communication (1948)
2. Norbert Wiener, from
Cybernetics; or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948)
3. Harold Garfinkel, from
Toward a Sociological Theory of Information (1952)
4. Donald MacKay, from “The Place of ‘Meaning’ in the Theory of Information” (1955)
5. Claude Shannon, “The Bandwagon” (1956)
6. Gregory Bateson, from “The Cybernetics of ‘Self ’: A Theory of Alcoholism” (1972)
7. John Durham Peters, from “
Information: Notes Toward a Critical History” (1988)
8. N. Katherine Hayles, from “Contesting for the Body of Information: The Macy Conferences on Cybernetics” (1999)
9. Peter Janich, from
What Is Information? (2006)
10. Matthieu Triclot, from
The Cybernetic Moment (2008)
Order, Number1. Michel Foucault, from
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966)
2. Mary Poovey, from
A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society (1998)
3. Ian Hacking, from
The Taming of Chance (1990)
4. Thomas Richards, from
The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy of Empire (1994)
5. Friedrich Hayek, from “The Use of Knowledge in Society” (1945)
6. Claude Lévi-Strauss, from “The Mathematics of Man” (1954)
7. Lily Kay, from
Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code (2000)
The Work of Art1. Martin Heidegger, from “The Origin of the Work of Art” (1950)
2. Walter Benjamin, from “The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov” (1936)
3. Yuri M. Lotman, “The Future for Structural Poetics” (1979)
4. Abraham Moles, from
Information Theory and Esthetic Perception (1958)
5. Haroldo De Campos, from “The Informational Temperature of the Text” (1960)
6. Umberto Eco, from
The Open Work (1962)
7. William R. Paulson, from
The Noise of Culture: Literary Texts in a World of Information (1988)
Media Ecologies1. Frances Yates, from
The Art of Memory (1966)
2. Mary J. Carruthers, from “
Ars oblivionalis, ars inveniendi: The Cherub Figure and the Arts of Memory” (2009)
3. Michael E. Hobart and Zachary S. Schiffman, from
Information Ages: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Computer Revolution (1998)
4. Walter Ong, from
Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982)
5. Sigmund Freud, from “A Note Upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad’ ” (1925)
6. Vannevar Bush, from “As We May Think” (1945)
7. Marshall McLuhan, from
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964)
8. Friedrich Kittler, from “There Is No Software” (1993)
9. Vilém Flusser, from
Form and Material (1993) and
Recoding (1987)
10. Lisa Gitelman, from
Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents (2014)
Informed Society1. James Beniger, from
The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society (1986)
2. Yoneji Masuda, from
The Information Society as Post-Industrial Society (1981)
3 Paul Virilio, from
The Information Bomb (1999)
4. C. A. Bayly, from
Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (1996)
5. Mary Elizabeth Berry, from
Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period (2006)
6. Ann Blair, from
Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age (2010)
7. Elias Muhanna, from “Why Was the Fourteenth Century a Century of Arabic Encyclopaedism?” (2013)
8. Steven Marks, from
The Information Nexus: Global Capitalism from the Renaissance to the Present (2016)
Acknowledgments
Index
