UC Berkeley

The contributors to this volume present the ideas of early twentieth century European thinkers about how best to create, disseminate and manage publicly available information. Interdisciplinary in perspective, the volume reflects the nature of the thinkers discussed, including: Otto Neurath, Patrick Geddes, the English Fabians, Paul Otlet, Wilhelm Ostwald and H.G. Wells. It also charts the interest since the latter part of the nineteenth century in finding new ways to think about and devise systems and technologies to manage the growing body of available information in such a way that Western civilization might be advanced; social misery and inequalities across classes and nations alleviated; economic prosperity promoted; and the cause of peaceful coexistence among nations advanced. In doing so the contributors provide a novel historical context for assessing widely held assumptions about today's globalized, 'post modern' information society. This volume will be of interest to sociologists, cultural studies scholars, historians of architecture, urban planning, science and technology studies and to library and information scientists as well as to all who are curious about the complex context of what has been called today's information revolution and the creation of a modern networked information society. These essays illuminate a little-known yet fascinating world of documentalists, librarians, scientists, communications experts, and utopian dreamers, who pioneered a new understanding of information integral to European modernism. With its rich historical perspective, this book offers a powerful corrective to the idea that the information society is a recent phenomenon. This spectacular collection - erudite, original, playful - explores the development of the vast information machines which were imagined or deployed as our information society developed. Its readers will come away with new understandings of the nature of information and of the project of modernism.