Whether termed the ‘network society’, the ‘knowledge society’ or the ‘information
society’, it is widely accepted that a new age has dawned, unveiled by powerful
computer and communication technologies. Yet for millennia humans have been
recording knowledge and culture, engaging in informational activity. Following the
invention of writing around 10,000 years ago, the first libraries (repositories of clay
tablets) appeared in the third millennium BC. Thereafter, the emergence of the
codex (the format of the book) around 2,000 years ago, the arrival of printing in the
fifteenth century, the invention of the electric telegraph in the nineteenth century
and the proliferation of audio-visual technologies – radio, film and television – in
the twentieth century each represented a quantum leap forward in the history of the
communication of information. The information society can hardly be said to be
new: in a way, it is possible to argue that most ‘civilised’ societies have been
informational ones. In assessing the social importance of information historically,
it is our contention that continuities outweigh discontinuities. In short, the epochal
nature of the information society is a myth – certainly when compared to other
immensely important and fundamental shifts in human culture and relations, such
as the emergence of capitalism or of modernity