When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700-1850

One of the myths of the computer era is that it is our age that invented Information Technology. In a book that is as timely as it is scholarly, Dan Headrick shows how the age of enlightenment discovered ‘information’ as a systematic way of organizing the things we know. Information technologies preceded industrialization and clearly played a major role in the emergence of modern production techniques and the democratic institutions of free market. Headrick is one of the most imaginative and original minds working on historical questions today. –Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University