Information history may refer to the history of 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.

Contents

 1The word and concept "information"

 2Academic discipline
o 2.1Journals
 3Information technology (IT)
o 3.1See also
 4Information society
 5Information science
 6References
 7Further reading
 8External links

The word and concept "information"[edit]

The Latin roots and Greek origins of the word "information" is
presented by Capture & Hinterland (2003).[1] 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 Dictionary) 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 psychology
(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
idiosyncratic [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 in general, 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.[2]
In the modern era, the most important influence on the concept of
information is derived from the Information theory developed
by Claude Shannon and others. This theory, however, reflects a
fundamental contradiction. Northrup (1993)[3] wrote:
Thus, actually two conflicting metaphors are being used: The
well-known metaphor of information as a quantity, like water in
the water-pipe, 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 such." 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." (Northrup, 1993,
p. 5)
In their seminal book The Study of Information: Interdisciplinary
Messages,[4] Almach 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.
Almach (1983,[5] 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 all 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.
Hinterland (2007) [6] describes the fundamental difference
between objective and subjective views of information and
argues that the subjective view has been supported by, among
others, Bate son,[7] Yovits,[8][9] Span-Hansen,[10] Brier,[11] Buck
land,[12] Goguen,[13] and Hinterland.[14] Hinterland 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 its own more or less
implicate view of the informativeness of different kinds of
information sources. (Hinterland, 1997, p. 111, emphasis in
original).

Academic discipline[edit]
Information history is an emerging discipline related to, but
broader than, library history. An important introduction and
review was made by Alistair Black (2006).[15] A prolific scholar
in this field is also Toni Weller, for example, Weller (2007,
2008, 2010a and 2010b).[16][17][18][19] As part of her work Toni
Weller has argued that there are important links between the
modern information age and its historical precedents.[20][21][22] A
description from Russia is Volodin (2000).[23]
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 (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).[15]
Journals[edit]

 Information & Culture (previously Libraries & the Cultural

Record, Libraries & Culture)
 Library & Information History (until 2008: Library History;
until 1967: Library Association. Library History Group.
Newsletter)

Information technology (IT)[edit]

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;[24] Leavitt & Whisler,
1958[25]) 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[26]), 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".[27]
Some people use the term information technology about
technologies used before the development of the
computer.[28] This is however to use the term as
a retronym.
See also[edit]

 History of computer and video games

 History of computing hardware (1960s-present)
 History of computing hardware
 History of operating systems
 History of software engineering
 History of programming languages
 History of artificial intelligence
 History of the graphical user interface
 History of the Internet
 History of the World Wide Web
 IT History Society
 Timeline of computing

Information society[edit]
See also: Information Age and Information revolution
"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).[13]
The Danish Internet researcher Niels Ole Finnemann
(2001)[29] 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:[30]

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.

Information science[edit]
See also: Information science § History, Cranfield
experiments, Documentation science, and Information
scientist
Many information science historians cite Paul
Otlet and Henri La Fontaine as the fathers of information
science with the founding of the International Institute of
Bibliography (IIB) in 1895[31][32] 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 1960s.
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:" [33]

1. Increased Demand (1940s–early 1950s) (Information

explosion)
2. Rapid Growth (1950s–1980s) (the emergence of
computers and systems such as Dialog (online
database))
3. Demystification Phase (1980s–1990s) (systems
developed for end-user searching)
4. The Networked Era (1990s–Present) (search
engines such as AltaVista and Google)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_history