The modern invention of information : discourse, history, and power / Ronald E. Day.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Day, Ronald E., 1959-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Information society--History.

Information society.

Information theory--History.

Information theory.

Information theory in literature.

Information science--Philosophy--History.

Information science.

Information science--Philosophy.

History.

Physical Description:

x, 139 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, [2001]

Summary:

Examining texts from different information ages in Europe and the United States, Ronald E. Day argues that the history of information culture in the twentieth century ideologically shapes the very form for history and historicity in modernity.

After laying the groundwork and justifying his method of close reading for this study, Day examines the texts of two pre-World War II documentalists, Paul Otlet and Suzanne Briet. Through the work of Otlet and Briet, Day shows how documentation and information were associated with notions of cultural progress. Both writers understood documentation to reflect historical progress as well as to rationally create social order and community.

Day devotes a chapter to a discussion of the social expansion of the conduit metaphor in the works of Warren Weaver and Norbert Wiener. The conduit metaphor lies at the heart of post-World War II information theory and the models of language and community that come out of that expansion. He then shows how the work of contemporary French multimedia theorist Pierre Levy refracts the earlier philosophical writings of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari through the prism of the capitalist understanding of the "virtual society."

Turning back to the pre-World War II period, Day examines two critics of the information society: Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin. He explains Heidegger's philosophical critique of the information culture's model of language and truth as well as Benjamin's aesthetic and historical critique of mass information and communication.

Day concludes by contemplating the relation of critical theory and information, particularly in regard to the information culture's transformation of history, historiography, and historicity into positive categories of assumed and represented knowledge.

In short, Day provides a historically informed critical analysis of the concept and politics of information in the twentieth century. Analyzing texts from Europe and the United States, his critical reading method goes beyond traditional historiographical readings of communication and information by engaging specific historical texts in terms of their attempts to construct and reshape history.

Contents:

1. Introduction: Remembering "Information" 1

2. European Documentation: Paul Otlet and Suzanne Briet 7

3. Information Theory, Cybernetics, and the Discourse of "Man" 38

4. Pierre Levy and the "Virtual" 60

5. Heidegger and Benjamin: The Metaphysics and Fetish of Information 91

6. Conclusion: "Information" and the Role of Critical Theory 114.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 131-134) and index.

ISBN:

0809323907

OCLC:

45136686