Sobre las revoluciones y la ‘revolución de la información’ On revolutions and the ‘information revolution’ Alan GILCHRIST Cura Consortium and Metataxis Ltd. [email protected] Resumen Abstract La denominada ‘revolución de la información’ es The so-called 'Information Revolution' is contrasted contrastada con las revoluciones clásicas de la agri- with the classical revolutions of agriculture and indus- cultura y la industrialización; y se descubre que el try and found to be misleading because of the ab- concepto es confuso debido a la naturaleza abstracta stract nature of the word information. It is argued that del término información. Se arguye que, en realidad, in fact there is rather a Communications Revolution se trata más bien de una revolución de las comunica- following on from a succession of prior and dramatic ciones, construida sobre una sucesión de revolucio- lesser revolutions in communication 'technologies'. At nes previas y dramáticas en las tecnologías de la the moment, the new Communications Revolution is comunicación. En el momento actual, la nueva revo- swamping the world with 'messages' that may or may lución de las comunicaciones está inundando el mun- not constitute meaningful information. It is speculated do con ‘mensajes’, que pueden o no constituir infor- that the advent of social media and networking may mación significativa. Se especula que el advenimiento eventually solve this problem of overload and make de los medios sociales y del trabajo en red puede some sense out of the seeming chaos; and that there finalmente resolver este problema de sobrecarga may still be a role for information scientists to play in informativa y extraer algún sentido del caos aparente; this process. y que todavía puede haber un papel que desempeñar Keywords: Information revolution. Communication para los científicos de la información en este proceso. revolution. Information. History. Evolution. Palabras clave: Revolución de la información. Revo- lución de la comunicación. Información. Historia. Evolución. 1. Introduction ‘information revolution’ can be dangerously mis- leading. There is no doubt that the advent of the compu- ter, followed by the Internet, the World Wide 2. On revolutions Web and mobile computing have made a huge impact on the lives of millions of people —and It is the big Revolutions that get the headlines: will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. the French and American in the purely social That impact is the focus of much debate and sphere and the Agricultural and Industrial in the study from which it is not yet clear what the march of technological progress with associated exact social and economic effects will be; so it social change. But history is punctuated with may cloud issues to refer to an 'Information Re- many minor revolutions, often having significant volution' in such debate and study unless we are effects, some but not all of which are labelled as clear just what might be meant by that expres- revolutions. Consider the advance made when sion. As information scientists we should be Neolithic man first created a spear by fixing a conscious of the slippery nature of the concept sharpened flint to a wooden shaft, thus making of information, particularly when it is used in hunting more effective and safer. Much more combination with words like revolution. As Ros- revolutionary was the discovery of fire, possibly zak (1986) has said “Information has come to by Homo erectus some 400,000 years ago, a denote whatever can be coded for transmission discovery that allowed early man to cook his through a channel that connects a source with a food, keep warm and extend his activities be- receiver, regardless of semantic content”. This yond daylight. Such discoveries, of course, af- paper will discuss revolutions, not from the vie of fected only small communities but still marked a trained historian, but as an information scien- significant advances in man’s technical, econo- tist, before treating the concept of 'information' mic and social development. The later and lar- within the context of the expression ‘information ger revolutions made greater impacts because revolution’ and concluding that the expression the communities were larger, and because there were greater connections between cities and Gilchrist, Alan. On revolutions and the ‘Information Revolution’. // Ibersid. 7 (2013) 13-20. ISSN 1888-0967. 14 towns, city states and later between nations. tin mines. Developing the earlier proto-Sinaitic Between the larger revolutions there were sma- alphabet, they produced the first truly internatio- ller revolutions often occurring as continuations; nal phonetic alphabet consisting of 22 conso- or interacting with other revolutions as in the nant letters. This spread to Ancient Greece mechanization of agriculture in the 19th Century, (which added two vowels) and thence to ancient so that we may rather think of a series of waves Rome; even, remarkably, to its use in Hebrew becoming higher and more complex. and Arabic where it easily supported these two languages that are read from right to left. This 2.1. The first Agricultural Revolution Phoenician alphabet, produced in the support of trade, is the ancestor of all modern European Agriculture in a limited form of planting and orthographies. cropping and the rearing of domesticated ani- mals probably existed amongst nomadic hunter- The Sumerians wrote on clay because it was the gatherers, but the first widely noted Agricultural most abundant and accessible material availa- Revolution did not occur until people began to ble. Likewise, the Ancient Egyptians wrote on settle in the fertile plains of Mesopotamia in papyrus, manufactured from the acres of reeds about 3,500 BCE. This evolution involved a wi- growing by the Nile, and this was still the most der range of cultivated crops and techniques common medium when the great Library of Ale- such as irrigation and food storage; and this xandria was built. There is a story that its foun- supported the production of food surpluses. The der later banned the export of papyrus because dramatic effect of this was to support the crea- he was jealous of the growth of the library at tion of complex settlements in which emerged Pergamum. That library responded by inventing centralized administrations and political structu- parchment as a writing material (1). Parchment res; a hierarchy of citizens, division of labour; art can be made anywhere, being manufactured and architecture; and in about 3,000 BCE the from the skins of animals, principally sheep and ‘invention’ of writing. goats. (A better class of parchment, known as vellum is made from calfskin). Parchment was 2.2. Writing and writing materials the main medium used till the arrival of paper, invented in China, but slow to arrive in the West, At first, writing was considered to be a sacred via Baghdad and Al-Andalus (modern Andalu- gift of the gods, but when traders got to un- sia) during the “Golden Age of Islam” some time derstand this invention they realised it was a after the 8th Century CE and finally in Germany better way of communicating than by the use of around 1338 and in England not until 1494. simple ‘tokens’. These consisted of clay tablets When Gutenberg first printed 210 copies of The inscribed with rough drawings of, for example, Bible, he produced 30 on parchment and 180 on grain or oil and attached to goods in transport or paper. It is estimated that each parchment copy storage. It wasn’t long before this innovative required 300 sheep skins (Fan, 1997). No won- cuneiform writing on clay tablets spread to der that paper became the dominant medium till neighbouring tribes, such as the Akkadians, the challenged by digitization. Assyrians and later the Babylonians. There is evidence that writing was taught in the schools 2.3. Natural Philosophy to Science — from the and Fara (2009) notes that archaeologists wor- “Golden Age of Islam” to the Renaissance king on digs in Nippur, a city of Sumeria, disco- vered a school dating from about the 18th Cen- The expression ‘Scientific Revolution’ has been tury BCE, complete with “clay tablets inscribed the subject of much debate. Some scholars with copies of lists and tables: children were regard it as a period stretching roughly from the learning to read, write and do arithmetic”. In the beginning of the Italian Renaissance to the end courtyards they found “recycling bins for soaking of the Northern Renaissance; roughly from the th th old tablets with water and fresh clay so that they 14 Century to the 17 Century, from Coperni- could be used again. Scribes made their own cus to Newton. Undoubtedly, this was a fertile tablets, and the presence of clumsy shapes with period, but others argue, notably Thomas Kuhn, awkward writing shows that children were being that scientific progress is largely cyclical, consis- taught this craft”. ting in Kuhn’s terms (Kuhn, 1962) of periods of ‘normal science’: “the normal state of a science During the period 1,550 to 300 BCE, the Phoe- and of the community of researchers who consti- nicians from the Eastern Mediterranean had tute it”, interspersed with ‘paradigm shifts’: when established an extensive mastery of trading a new paradigm occurs it produces “a non- across the whole of the Mediterranean, establis- cumulative scientific change, a rupture, a break hing trading posts at such places as Carthage, from the past”. With this view, it is impossible to even journeying as far as Britain, attracted by its Gilchrist, Alan. On revolutions and the ‘Information Revolution’. // Ibersid. 7 (2013) 13-20. ISSN 1888-0967. 15 define when science began. As Fara (2009) blished by different monastic orders. The impor- says, in asking this question: tance of these monasteries was enormous; first of all because they were centres of learning and It is possible to pick out ideas and discoveries that later became incorporated within a global scientific education, and secondly because they included enterprise.