Information history may refer to the history of each of the categories listed below. 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.
The word and concept "information"
The Latin roots and Greek origins of the word "information" is presented by Capurro & Hjørland. References on "formation or molding of the mind or character, training, instruction, teaching" date from the 14th century in both English 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 form to matter" to "communicating something to someone". Peters concludes: 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 wrote: In their seminal book The Study of Information: Interdisciplinary Messages, Almach and Mansfield 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 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. Hjørland 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, Yovits, Span-Hansen, Brier, Buck land, Goguen, and Hjørland. Hjørland provided the following example:
Academic discipline
Information history is an emerging discipline related to, but broader than, library history. An important introduction and review was made by Alistair Black. A prolific scholar in this field is also Toni Weller, for example, Weller. As part of her work Toni Weller has argued that there are important links between the modern information age and its historical precedents. A description from Russia is Volodin. Alistair Black 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 and the history of information policy.
"Bodies influential in the field include the American Library Association’sRound Table on Library History, the Library History Section of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, and, in the U.K., the Library and Information History Group of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. 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, Denmark, Finland, and Norway. 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.".
Journals
Information & Culture
Library & Information History
Information technology (IT)
The term IT is ambiguous although mostly synonym with computer technology. Haigh wrote Some people use the term information technology about technologies used before the development of the computer. This is however to use the term as a retronym.
Information society
"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.". The Danish Internet researcher Niels Ole Finnemann 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:
Oral cultures based mainly on speech.
Literate cultures: speech + writing.
Print cultures: speech + written texts + print.
Mass-media cultures: speech + written texts + print + analogue electric media.
Second-order alphabetic cultures: speech + written texts + print + analogue electric media + digital media.
Information science
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 in 1895 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 classified the history and development of information representation and retrieval 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:"
