Information: A Reader

Book

Information

A Reader

Edited by: Eric Hayot , Lea Pao and Anatoly Detwyler

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2021

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About this book

Information: A Reader provides an introduction to the concept of information in historical, literary, and cultural studies. It features excerpts from more than forty texts by theorists and critics who have helped establish the notion of the “information age” or expand upon it.

Author / Editor information

Detwyler Anatoly :

Anatoly Detwyler (Columbia PhD) is an assistant professor in the Asian Languages and Cultures department at Wisconsin-Madison. He is coeditor with Eric Hayot and Lea Pao of Philip's book Information: A Reader. His publications include a recent article, coauthored with Hoyt Long and Yuancheng Chu, in Cultural Analytics.Eric Hayot is distinguished professor of comparative literature and Asian studies at the Pennsylvania State University.

Anatoly Detwyler is assistant professor of modern Chinese literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lea Pao is assistant professor of German studies at Stanford University.

Reviews

Dennis Yi Tenen, author of Plain Text: The Poetics of Computation:
Superbly compiled, the reader brings together several clusters of important primary sources from diverse disciplinary perspectives including communication theory, philosophy, political science, media studies, and literary criticism. A number of unexpected juxtapositions emerge as a result, amounting to a remarkably coherent commentary—a master class—on the concept of information in the humanities.

Topics

Linguistics and Semiotics Semiotics Semiotics, other

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
An Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Contributor Eric Hayot Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
THE SHANNON KNOT
1 Claude Shannon, from A Mathematical Theory of Communication (1948) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	20
2 Norbert Wiener, from Cybernetics; or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
3 Harold Garfinkel, from Toward a Sociological Theory of Information (1952) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	37
4 Donald MacKay, from “The Place of ‘Meaning’ in the Theory of Information” (1955) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	41
5 Claude Shannon, “The Bandwagon” (1956) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
6 Gregory Bateson, from “The Cybernetics of ‘Self ’: A Theory of Alcoholism” (1972) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
7 John Durham Peters, from “Information: Notes Toward a Critical History” (1988) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	60
8 N. Katherine Hayles, from “Contesting for the Body of Information: The Macy Conferences on Cybernetics” (1999) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
9 Peter Janich, from What Is Information? (2006) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	76
10 Matthieu Triclot, from The Cybernetic Moment (2008) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	82
ORDER, NUMBER
1 Michel Foucault, from The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
2 Mary Poovey, from A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society (1998) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
3 Ian Hacking, from The Taming of Chance (1990) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	113
4 Thomas Richards, from The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy of Empire (1994) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
5 Friedrich Hayek, from “The Use of Knowledge in Society” (1945) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	127
6 Claude Lévi-Strauss, from “The Mathematics of Man” (1954) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
7 Lily Kay, from Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code (2000) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	146
THE WORK OF ART
1 Martin Heidegger, from “The Origin of the Work of Art” (1950) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
2 Walter Benjamin, from “The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov” (1936) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	170
3 Yuri M. Lotman, “The Future for Structural Poetics” (1979) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
4 Abraham Moles, from Information Theory and Esthetic Perception (1958) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
5 Haroldo De Campos, from “The Informational Temperature of the Text” (1960) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	194
6 Umberto Eco, from The Open Work (1962) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
7 William R. Paulson, from The Noise of Culture: Literary Texts in a World of Information (1988) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	209
MEDIA ECOLOGIES
1 Frances Yates, from The Art of Memory (1966) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
2 Mary J. Carruthers, from “Ars oblivionalis, ars inveniendi: The Cherub Figure and the Arts of Memory” (2009) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	226
3 Michael E. Hobart and Zachary S. Schiffman, from Information Ages: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Computer Revolution (1998) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235
4 Walter Ong, from Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	242
5 Sigmund Freud, from “A Note Upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad’ ” (1925) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	248
6 Vannevar Bush, from “As We May Think” (1945) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	253
7 Marshall McLuhan, from Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	260
8 Friedrich Kittler, from “There Is No Software” (1993) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
9 Vilém Flusser, from Form and Material (1993) and Recoding (1987) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	271
10 Lisa Gitelman, from Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents (2014) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	279
INFORMED SOCIETY
1 James Beniger, from The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society (1986) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	289
2 Yoneji Masuda, from The Information Society as Post-Industrial Society (1981) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	300
3 Paul Virilio, from The Information Bomb (1999) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	313
4 C. A. Bayly, from Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (1996) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	318
5 Mary Elizabeth Berry, from Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period (2006) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	327
6 Ann Blair, from Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age (2010) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	341
7 Elias Muhanna, from “Why Was the Fourteenth Century a Century of Arabic Encyclopaedism?” (2013) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	352
8 Steven Marks, from The Information Nexus: Global Capitalism from the Renaissance to the Present (2016) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	361
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	373
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	379

Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

November 25, 2021

eBook ISBN:

9780231546546

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

https://doi.org/10.7312/hayo18620

eBook ISBN: 9780231546546

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Professional and scholarly;

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