The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society

Why do we find ourselves living in an Information Society? How did the collection, processing and communication of information come to play an increasingly important role in advanced industrial countries relative to the roles of matter and energy? Is this change recent—or not? Beniger traces the origin of the Information Society to major economic and business crises of the past century. In the USA, applications of steam power in the early 1800s brought a dramatic rise in the speed, volume and complexity of industrial processes, making them difficult to control. Many problems arose: train wrecks, misplacement of freight cars, loss of shipments, inability to maintain high rates of inventory turnover. Inevitably the Industrial Revolution, with its ballooning use of energy to drive material processes, required a corresponding growth in the exploitation of information: "the Control Revolution." Between the 1840s and the 1920s came most of the important information-processing and communication technologies still in use: telegraphy, modern bureaucracy, rotary power printing, postage stamps, paper money, typewriter, telephone, punchcard processing, motion pictures, radio and TV. Beniger shows that more recent developments in microprocessors, computers and telecommunications are only a smooth continuation of this Control Revolution. Along the way he touches on many fascinating topics: why breakfast was invented, how trademarks came to be worth more than the companies that own them, why some employees wear uniforms and whether time zones will always be necessary. The book is impressive not only for the breadth of its scholarship but also for the subtle force of its argument. It will be welcomed by sociologists, economists and historians of science and technology.