4. The Age of Alphabets

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Preface to Informatica ix
4. Introduction 1
5. 1. Networks and Hierarchies 5
6. 2. Family Trees and the Tree of Life 16
7. 3. The Ice Age Information Explosion 30
8. 4. The Age of Alphabets 38
9. 5. Illuminating the Dark Age 66
10. 6. A Steam Engine of the Mind 85
11. 7. The Astral Power Station 105
12. 8. The Encyclopedic Revolution 123
13. 9. The Moose That Roared 131
14. 10. The Industrial Library 141
15. 11. Information as “Science” 157
16. 12. The Web That Wasn’t 177
17. 13. Memories of the Future 211
18. Appendixes
19. A. John Wilkins’s Universal Categories 219
20. B. Thomas Jefferson’s 1783 Catalog of Books 222
21. C. The Dewey Decimal System 224
22. D. The Universal Decimal Classification 226
23. E. Ranganathan’s Colon Classification 231
24. Acknowledgments 235
25. Notes 237
26. Bibliography 249
27. Index 257