Why will we locate ourselves dwelling in a data Society? How did the gathering, processing, and conversation of knowledge come to play an more and more vital position in complicated business nations relative to the jobs of topic and effort? And why is that this switch recent--or is it?

James Beniger lines the starting place of the data Society to significant fiscal and enterprise crises of the previous century. within the usa, purposes of steam strength within the early 1800s introduced a dramatic upward push within the pace, quantity, and complexity of business strategies, making them tricky to regulate. ratings of difficulties arose: deadly educate wrecks, misplacement of freight autos for months at a time, lack of shipments, lack of ability to keep up excessive charges of stock turnover. unavoidably the economic Revolution, with its ballooning use of power to force fabric strategies, required a corresponding progress within the exploitation of data: the keep watch over Revolution.

Between the 1840s and the Nineteen Twenties got here many of the vital information-processing and conversation applied sciences nonetheless in use this day: telegraphy, glossy forms. rotary energy printing, the postage stamp, paper cash, typewriter, mobile, punch-card processing, films, radio, and tv. Beniger exhibits that more moderen advancements in microprocessors, desktops, and telecommunications are just a soft continuation of this Control Revolution. alongside the way in which he touches on many desirable themes: why breakfast used to be invented, how emblems got here to be worthy greater than the corporations that personal them, why a few staff put on uniforms, and no matter if time zones will regularly be necessary.

The booklet is striking not just for the breadth of its scholarship but in addition for the subtlety and strength of its argument. it will likely be welcomed by means of sociologists, economists, historians of technology and expertise, and all curious typically.