Info about information | The Enlightened Economist

There’s one thing great a couple of ebook titled All The Facts. Formidable or what? The subtitle narrows it down, a bit, to “A Historical past of Info in the USA since 1870.” One nation, one and a half centuries. Evidently, it’s nonetheless formidable in its scope, embracing not simply the applied sciences of knowledge administration – from account books and filing cabinets to punch cards and the Web – but additionally how info has been created and used throughout all features of life: house responsibilities, healthcare, manufacturing facility work, nationwide safety, you title it. Bins have headings corresponding to “The automobile salesman as a data employee within the Nineteen Eighties” and “Progress in Medical Info in America: evolution in a physician’s coaching 1870-1940”.

It’s a hefty tome, whose primary level is the central function info performs in trendy society. I’m with the programme; for instance, agreeing with such statements: “An organization’s success, relies on its experiences, what data or info it and its workers posess … what an organization is aware of is the supply of all potential, and certainly precise, will increase in productiveness.” (p94) Info ecosystems construction markets and the financial system as a complete (p282).

Though I did learn it by way of, it is perhaps extra interesting to some readers as a ebook to dip in to, or to seek advice from for some particular points (corresponding to info in drugs or in houeshold administration). I discovered it to be – sure – full of information, and a mix of pleasing and extreme element, relying on how I used to be within the particular examples. It dropped at thoughts the dimensions and ambition of Vaclav Smil’s books on vitality & different issues, that are equally each engrossing and difficult reads.