Chapter 1. An Introduction to the Long Trip to the Information Age: From an Age of Paper to the Dawn of the Second Industrial Revolution, 1600–1875

 

The world which is arising is still half buried in the ruins of the world falling into decay, and in the vast confusion of all human affairs at present, no one can know which of the old institutions and former mores will continue to hold up their heads and which will in the end go under.

 
 --ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

As the pilgrims in the early 1600s were sailing toward what we would eventually call New England, they spent time preparing a document of understanding about how they would run their lives in the wilderness. They considered their journey to be one to a New Eden, to a place where they could ...

Get Making the Information Society: Experience, Consequences, and Possibilities now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.