A brilliant historical analysis that provides the context for the rise of information technology over the past century

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Product Description

Why do we find ourselves living in an Information Society? How did the collection, processing, and communication of information come to play an increasingly important role in advanced industrial countries relative to the roles of matter and energy? And why is this change recent--or is it?

James Beniger traces the origin of the Information Society to major economic and business crises of the past century. In the United States, applications of steam power in the early 1800s brought a dramatic rise in the speed, volume, and complexity of industrial processes, making them difficult to control. Scores of problems arose: fatal train wrecks, misplacement of freight cars for months at a time, loss of shipments, inability to maintain high rates of inventory turnover. Inevitably the Industrial Revolution, with its ballooning use of energy to drive material processes, required a corresponding growth in the exploitation of information: the Control Revolution.

Between the 1840s and the 1920s came most of the important information-processing and communication technologies still in use today: telegraphy, modern bureaucracy. rotary power printing, the postage stamp, paper money, typewriter, telephone, punch-card processing, motion pictures, radio, and television. Beniger shows that more recent developments in microprocessors, computers, and telecommunications are only a smooth continuation of this Control Revolution. Along the way he touches on many fascinating topics: why breakfast was invented, how trademarks came to be worth more than the companies that own them, why some employees wear uniforms, and whether time zones will always be necessary.

The book is impressive not only for the breadth of its scholarship but also for the subtlety and force of its argument. It will be welcomed by sociologists, economists, historians of science and technology, and all curious in general.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #369022 in Books
• Published on: 1989-03-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 508 pages

Review
USC Professor Beniger persuasively argues a strikingly original thesis, i.e., that the First World's ongoing transition to a global information society is really one of long standing. The industrial Revolution made it "necessary to control [the] processes and movements [of a material economy] at speeds faster than those of wind, water, and animal power - rarely more than a few miles per hour," he observes. By no coincidence, he points out, almost all of the basic communications technologies now in use emerged during the 19th century: photography and telegraphy (1830's); rotary-power printing (1840's); telephone (1876); motion pictures (1894); wireless telegraphy (1895); and magnetic tape recording (1899). Radio, television, and computers appeared during the first half of the 20th century, consequences of a Control Revolution under way for a century. Rapid changes in telecommunications and mass media, which greatly expanded the information-processing capabilities of government and business, represented innovative, longer-term solutions to the loss of economic and political control resulting from the Industrial Revolution. The immediate response, he notes, was brisk growth in administrative bureaucracies. In a programmatic effort to maintain its authority "at all levels from interpersonal to international relations," government supported the new technologies in various ways. In 1890, for example, the Commerce Department used punch cards perfected by Herman Hollerith (whose invention helped launch IBM) to tabulate US census data. This accessible text offers engrossing perspectives on the roots and implications of today's so-called knowledge industries. (Kirkus Reviews)

Review
Rich and fascinating...The book is thoroughly enjoyable reading, partly because the author has pulled the strands together from so many different fields with such obvious thoroughness...I know of no other source that provides such a rich cultural history of our field. (Information Processing & Managment )

This book is designed to be the synthetic work on the 'Information Society' and its origins, and by all rights it will be. It is beautifully done and is built to last...Everything about the book is intelligent. (Critical Review )

A masterly treatment of some of the most imporant development in the making of modern society. Beniger's book will take its place alongside the four or five books of the past twenty years which have most influenced our understanding of current changes, not just in the United States but the industrial world as a whole. (Journal of American Studies )

As systems involving people and machines increaase in size, complexity and speed of operation, they confront recurring problems of coherence and control...The contribution of The Control Revolution by James R. Benigeris to describe and analyze the range of methods modern societies use to keep things from falling apart...It argues that today's dependence on information technology has its origins in practical needs spawned by the Industrial Revolution...The book offers a skillful cross-disciplinary synthesis that draws on hundreds of scholarly studies in the history of technology, business history and social science...[A] challenging, highly readable work. (New York Times Book Review )

About the Author
James R. Beniger is Associate Professor at the Annenberg School of Communications, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

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Customer Reviews

Amazing
The writer thoroughly researched his work. He studied how technology affects organizations and how crisis of information come into play when dealing with mass markets and new technologies. This is a must read work.

Outstanding book
Beniger has published two sole-authored books. The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society (Harvard University Press, 1986) gained a full-page review (with brief biography) in the New York Times Book Review and the lead review (and cover illustration) in the special book review edition of Science, journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Now in its third printing, The Control Revolution won the eleventh annual Association of American Publishers award for "the most outstanding book in the social and behavioral sciences" and the Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award; the 1989 softcover edition was selected by the New York Times Book Review as a "Notable Paperback of the Year." Recently Harvard University Press announced contracts to publish The Control Revolution in two additional languages: in Italian by UTET Libreria, an Italian book publisher, by December 1995; and in Mandarin Chinese by Laureate, a U.S. book publisher specialized in foreign translations for export, by May 1996.

Ground breaking, empirical work, cuts thru Info Society hype
If you have, like Beniger, asked the question "Why is information so critical for our current mode of production? Why Information? Why Now?" You need to read this book.

His basic argument is that the seeds of our contemporary information intensive society was sown way back during the start of the Industrial Revolution. In fact, information was critical to make the transition from feudal to industrial society. The reason being that the industrial revolution (entailing mechanization, steam power, assembly line etc.) speeded up the process of production to the extent that human beings on their own physical powers would be unable to keep up with the speed of production. In feudal/agricultural based societies, the production process was slow (i.e., ploughing using ox) and it remained in control of the individual. With the industrial revolution, the production process was speeded, resulting in what he terms as "a crisis of control." This reminds me a lot of the Charlie Chaplin movie "Modern Times." Don't know if you have seen it, if you have, you know exactly what I am talking about.

In order to resolve the crisis of control emerging from the speeded-up production process, you need information. Example: Steam engine travels faster than a human being. How do you keep track of the train if you can't run faster than it? String telegraph line along the railway track connecting different stations along the way. When train reaches station, the station master informs the next station about the next estimated arrival time. Think about it, if you didn't have a schedule or an estimated time of arrival/departure, it would be impossible to operate a passenger train service or a goods service. Speed brings uncertainty which can only be resolved through the acquisition of information.

Today, just-in-time production (epitomizing the heights of efficiency and speed) would not be possible without flow of information to control this process.

This is a great book! Much recommended for people who would like to exercise their grey cells. WARNING: Business travellers nourished on Tofflerian hype may have indigestion!