Finally finished listening to the latest Seminar about Long Term Thinking, Alex Wright on The Deep History of the Information Age. He skipped through the contents of his new book Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages.
He covers some interesting topics:
- talking about how the start of the European Ice 30,000 years ago led to humans banding together and socialising to hunt bigger game
- how this led to larger social groups – and the need to develop more complex hierarchies
- how this led to more trading and the need to record transactions
- which led to creation the scribe caste.. a minority literate culture in a predominantly oral culture world.
He then drew parrallels to our own circumstances:
- especially with climate change probably being the biggest it’s been since that Ice Age
- and the move from a literate culture to an online culture
- and mentioned this as a resurgence (of sorts) of oral culture
He also gave an overview of the various forms of literate culture: codex, books, scrolls.
And how the Bestiary in the Middle Ages – bridged oral (and visual) culture with literate culture.
How Industrialisation led to an explosion of books:
- even though printing press had been around for a hundred years
- due to an increase in a) urban population and b) more literate population
- and how libraries increased too.
The Paul Otlet section was probably the most revealing and the video he played can be seen here:
Shame the Nazi’s rocked up and destroyed the whole thing.
A brief history of information over 30,000 years – that’s Long Term thinking.