Böcker av Alex Wright

Informatica?the updated edition of Alex Wright's previously published Glut?continues the journey through the history of the information age to show how information systems emerge. Today's "information explosion" may seem like a modern phenomenon, but we are not the first generation?nor even the first species?to wrestle with the problem of information overload. Long before the advent of computers, human beings were collecting, storing, and organizing information: from Ice Age taxonomies to Sumerian archives, Greek libraries to Christian monasteries.Wright weaves a narrative that connects such seemingly far-flung topics as insect colonies, Stone Age jewelry, medieval monasteries, Renaissance encyclopedias, early computer networks, and the World Wide Web. He suggests that the future of the information age may lie deep in our cultural past.We stand at a precipice struggling to cope with a tsunami of data. Wright provides some much-needed historical perspective. We can understand the predicament of information overload not just as the result of technological change, but as the latest chapter in an ancient story that we are only beginning to understand.

A young man returns from France to his Ayrshire home in the summer of 1781. He finds employment with a wealthy merchant but he is drawn into intrigue and smuggling and is accused of a murder he didn't commit.

In 1934, Paul Otlet, a Belgian entrepreneur, designed a proto-Internet which he called a reseau mondial- literally, "worldwide web." Today, Otlet and his vision have been all but forgotten, thanks to a series of historical misfortunes, but Alex Wright brings Otlet's extraordinary story back into the light in this fascinating look at the dream of universal knowledge.

Spanning disciplines from evolutionary theory and cultural anthropology to the history of books, libraries, and computer science, Alex Wright weaves an intriguing narrative about pre-computer age information explosions.