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 isone of the most imaginative and original minds working on historical questions today."--Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University