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I have a problem: I forget things. Some days, that's a blessing. Who wants to remember every phone number they've ever learned long enough to dial? Forget it.

Other things, I wish I could remember better. Like someone's name or the answer on a test. This forgetting is such a problem that much human activity has been devoted to solving it.

Are we going to live alone from meal to meal? Personally, I'm not strong enough or fast enough.

Or are we going to find tools to extend our strength and find other people to work together and plan with? To use tools and work in groups we have to know things. Otherwise, we're pretty useless. So our problem becomes:

How can we know enough to get what we want ... or at least what we need?

Think of it as storing and transmitting information. That is, how can we organize information to make it useful? First, let's make sure we agree on what we mean by information.

What Is Information?

Information is a difference that makes a difference.

How long has information been around?

Information came into being at the cusp between orality and literacy, a singular moment that cannot itself be understood unless we first consider the nature of the oral culture that literacy would transform. In this oral world, memory functioned in sharp contrast to the way we literates conceive of it, not as a container for information but as a participatory act, commemoration, serving to maintain social consensus. The emotional power and immediacy of this activity prevented its participants from distinguishing between the content and the experience of commemoration in any consistent manner. Only with this distinction did the mental objects we call information come into being, and only then could memory become a container for them. The information revolution born of literacy is all the more stunning and revolutionary when seen in stark relief against an oral world where information did not exist.
-- Michel E. Hobart and Zachary S. Schiffman
Information Ages, p. 2

Information about reality answers the questions that all animals have: who, what, where, when, and how.

To that list, humans add names, of course, and the all-important why. The answers to why help us predict and sometimes even affect the future, maybe even improve things. Here are some common ways of answering these questions.

A review of the Buffalo Philharmonic's recent concert would be information about reality.

The score that the musicians played from would be information for reality.

The CD of the performance would be information as reality.

What carries information?

moleculesgenesphysical characteristics
bitsbytessoftware features, functions
letterswordsinformation, ideas, images
eventsstoriesculture and memory

What stores information?

paper, film, optical, magnetic

How do we manage and transmit information?

memory and language gestures, spoken words, pictures, written words, numbers

How much information is there?

If we wanted to store all of it, how much storage would we need?

How Much Information Is There In the World?
by Michael Lesk

In only a few years, we will be able save everything... and the typical piece of information will never be looked at by a human being.

How Much Information
by Peter Lyman and Hal R. Varian
School of Information Management and Systems
University of California at Berkeley

The world produces between 1 and 2 exabytes of unique information per year, which is roughly 250 megabytes for every man, woman, and child on earth. ... Printed documents of all kinds comprise only .003% of the total.

Data Powers of Ten

This list is a collection of estimates of the quantities of data contained by the various media.

Powers of Ten

View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.

Is This Progress?

Look at the history of human communication and problem-solving. What drives it? What do you think causes things to happen? God? Great leaders? Chance?

Or is it a combination of these and some sort of determinism? Determinism says that all events are caused by other events and that we can understand the cause.

For example, Marxists preach materialism. Royalists preach elitism. Priests preach spiritualism. Many folks, whether they know it or not, would agree with some degree of technological determinism. If people have a tool, they'll use it. If they don't have it, they'll eventually invent it. Events are driven by tools. History is driven by tools. Change is caused by tools.

I'm not sure how far I want to defend that position, but here's a sampling of the evidence offered by these determinists. They say that we're in the midst of several overlapping stories, one within another:

Story of tools to do work

secrets of lost empires

stick - reach, hit, poke, thread, and cut
sail - move heavy things with wind
wheel - move heavy things with water or a beast of burden
abacus - store and manipulate large numbers
money - store and trade value
writing - store and pass on information
engine - move heavy things without water or a beast of burden
computer - move and manipulate lots of symbolic information: numbers, words, and images

Story of symbols

to carry meaning and expression
visual, oral, and written languages alphabets, diction, and syntax
writing, drawing + other crafts painting, objects, voice, instruments, buildings, bookmaking

email suggestions to extend this list

Story of the book

2250 B.C. papyrus rolls
250 B.C. parchment manuscripts
360 codex
650 - 750 ink and paper
1450 Gutenberg
1873 typewriter

Story of information

350 B.C. Aristotle's Rhetoric
1588 Montaigne's invention of fact; Bacon's scientific method -- prior to that, knowledge / science had been speculative and philosophical
1650 English dictionary
1768 Encyclopedia Britannica
1800's textbooks

Story of digital networks

Gizmos, Inc., New Media aka Distributed Networks

1840 Morse code
1876 telephone
1904 radio
1938 tv

atoms and bits
transistors and chips
Moore's Law
1973 Internet
1974 PCs (Intel's 8080 chip)
1983 color monitors and graphics
1986 GUI

Story of hypertext

1945 Memex
1965 Ted Nelson
1987 Hypercard
1991 Tim Berners-Lee marries hypertext and the Internet and calls it the World Wide Web. The same year, Congress opened it to commercial traffic.

Learn More

I don't want to debate these dates, some of which are estimates. Others, such as the dates for the dictionary and for paper, ignores Eastern civilizations. If you have a more accurate date, email a reference and I'll be happy to change one of these, especially if the change affects the sequence.

Meet the New Boss

... same as the old boss. Each of us has our personal story with tools, language, information, and computers. On Ricci Street, it all comes together in the exchange of words and pictures, which is where it started and what it's always been: telling our stories to each other, using tools to extend ourselves and help each other.

Meet the new boss. Now we're calling it Information Design and Information Management. Same as the old boss. Telling stories, using tools. Let's learn more about doing it on computer networks. At the Bistro, you can talk about it.