Control Revolution

The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society, by James Beniger. ISBN:0674169867

Cosma Shalizi review:

I was going to say that this is undoubtedly the best work ever done by a professor of communications, but that would be praising it with faint damns, and it deserves better.

This is not a speculation or a vague schema but a very detailed history of the rise of technologies and techniques of communication and information-processing

His thesis is that modern information technologies, and with them the ``information society,'' began to take shape in the 1830s with the introduction of railroads, and really took off after 1880 with full industrialization. (industrial age)

The first part of the economy to move at industrial speed were the railroads, and the accompanying jump in the size of the information sector is dramatic

Beniger puts the modern synthesis (not his phrase) of industry and information in the period 1880-1920. By the latter date, the technology of control had been so perfected that the economies of all the warring powers in the Great War (World War I) could be managed by central planning --- those of the Allies, by combined planning. (Since this performance was repeated during the Second War, I'm tempted to say that market forces are simply too inefficient to be trusted with anything important, but this is not the place for those rants.)

The advent of computers was obviously very important, but they didn't usher in the information society, because we already were one

the first chapters of the book, where Beniger discusses such notions as control, communication, programming and information, gives something of their history and argues for their importance in the study of society, is long-winded, excessively detailed

and not as well-grounded as the remaining, historical parts of the book

Beniger's style is far from brilliant, and especially in the introductory chapters he is tempted to lapse into sociologese. This too may be demanded by the audience, but it is not a demand which should be met.