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Craig Robertson explores how the filing cabinet profoundly shaped the way that information and data have been sorted, stored, retrieved, and used. The filing cabinet emerges here as a sophisticated piece of information technology and a site of gendered labor that with its folders, files, and tabs continues to shape how we interact with information and data in today's digital world.

"All the Facts presents a history of the role of information in the United States since 1870, when the nation began a nearly 150-year period of economic prosperity and technological and scientific transformations. James Cortada argues that citizens and their institutions used information extensively as tools to augment their work and private lives and that they used facts to help shape how the nation evolved during these fourteen decades. He argues that information's role has long been a critical component of the work, play, culture, and values of this nation, and no more so than during the twentieth century when its function in society expanded dramatically. While elements of this story have been examined by thousands of scholars---such as the role of radio, newspapers, books, computers, and the Internet, about such institutions as education, big business, expanded roles of governments from town administration to the state house, from agriculture to the services and information industries---All the Facts looks at all of these elements holistically, providing a deeper insight into the way the United States evolved over time. An introduction and 11 chapters describe what this information ecosystem looked like, how it evolved, and how it was used. For another vast layer of information about this subject the reader is directed to the detailed bibliographic essay in the back of this book. It includes a narrative history, case studies in the form of sidebars, and stories illustrating key points. Readers will find, for example, the story of how the US postal system helped create today's information society, along with everything from books and newspapers to TV, computers, and the Internet. The build-up to what many today call the Information Age took a long time to achieve and continues to build momentum. The implications for the world, and not just for the United States, are as profound as any mega-trend one could identify in the history of humankind. All the Facts presents this development thoroughly in an easy-to-digest format that any lover of history, technology, or the history of information and business will enjoy"--

This book proposes a way to look at the history of information that is relevant to observers in other disciplines and familiar to historians of business, economics, sociology and technology. The author presents that with theoretical and historiographical discussions of what information ecosystems and infrastructures are and their value.

With detailed case studies addressing the sources of innovation in information technology, along with a conceptual framework to explain their effects, this book will be of interest to students and teachers of Western economic and social history, as well as to the general reader with an interest in the social impact of innovation

Information Technology has become symbolic of modernity and progress almost since its inception. The nature and boundaries of IT have also meant that it has shaped, or become embedded within a wide range of other scientific, technological and economic developments. Governments, from the outset, saw the computer as a strategic technology, a keystone of economic development and an area where technology policy should be targeted. This was true for those economies interested inmaintaining their technological and economic leadership, but also figured strongly in the developmental programmes of thos

This book tells the story of how, over centuries, people, society and culture created laws affecting supply of information. In the 21st century, uniform global copyright laws are claimed to be indispensable to the success of entertainment, internet and other information industries. Do copyright laws encourage information flow? Many say that copyright laws limit dissemination, harming society. In the last 300 years, industries armed with copyrights controlled output and distribution. Now the internet's disruption of economic patterns may radically reshape information regulation. Information freedom, a source of emancipation, may change the world

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction:Remembering "Information " -- 2. European Documentation: Paul Otlet and Suzanne Briet -- 3. Information Theory,Cybernetics, and the Discourse of "Man " -- 4. Pierre Lévy and the "Virtual " -- 5. Heidegger and Benjamin: The Metaphysics and Fetish of Information -- 6. Conclusion:"Information " and the Role of Critical Theory -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index -- Author Bio -- Back Cover

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- What Are Information Revolutions? -- Defining an Information Revolution -- Six Information Revolutions -- Shared Characteristics -- The Power of Information -- Highway and Village -- Sorting Media from Content -- Replacing Transportation -- Shaping and Being Shaped -- Difficult Beginnings -- Life Is Different -- Political Tools and Weapons -- Arresting Gorbachev -- Tiananmen Square -- The Infection of Mass Communication -- Terrorism and the Media -- Clandestine Radio -- Middle Eastern Examples of Media's Force -- New World Information Order -- Cultural Imperialism -- Economic Freedom with Political Controls -- Altering American Politics -- The Gulf War -- Notes -- 1: Writing The First Revolution -- The Invention of Writing -- Writing on Clay -- Advancing Knowledge -- Skin and Bones and Papyrus -- Papyrus in Egypt -- Papyrus in Greek Hands -- Parchment -- Other Writing Surfaces -- The Greeks -- The Alphabet -- Out of the Dark Ages -- A Time of Turmoil -- Supplementing an Oral Culture -- The Warning of Socrates -- From Greece to Rome -- The First Libraries -- The Lamp of Reason -- Carrying the Message -- Notes -- 2: Printing The Second Revolution -- Turbulent Europe -- Sources of News -- Reformation and Renaissance -- A Gift from China -- Origins -- No Information Revolution -- Paper Moves West -- 300 Sheep Skins for One Bible -- Books and Universities -- The First Universities -- The New Book Culture -- Censorship -- Punishment for Publishing -- Mail in the Middle Ages -- Postal Services for Town and Gown -- Postal Service as a Business -- Here a New, There a New -- Forerunners of Newspapers -- The First Newspapers -- Unintended Consequences -- Printing and Literacy -- Vernacular Printing -- Why Bother to Read? -- The Engines of Printing and Literacy

Troubling Transparency brings together leading scholars from different disciplines to analyze freedom of information policies in the United States and abroad-how they are working, how they are failing, and how they might be improved, especially the mixed legacy and effectiveness of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)