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Books: A Nation Transformed by Information
Topics: Knowledge-Knowledge DisseminationInformation-GeneralCommunication-Communication TechnologyInvention-CopyrightInformation-BooksEdited by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., and James W. Cortada
(Oxford University Press)
In their new book, A Nation Transformed by Information: How Information Has Shaped the United States from Colonial Times to the Present, HBS professor emeritus Alfred Chandler and IBM consultant and coeditor James Cortada travel back in time to seek enlightenment about the future. To a large extent, they write, “historical perspective is crucial to our understanding of information in the role of the transformation of the United States from the colonial period to the present.”
Chandler and Cortada each write an essay and coauthor a third in their contribution to the collection’s total of nine essays; the other six are written by experts on history, technology, and business. The book’s central message is that the country’s foundation and subsequent rise to its position of leadership in the world can be traced to the proliferation of information and to the technologies, systems, and infrastructure built to convey it. Americans’ commitment to democratic ideals, their fascination with technology, and their commercial and entrepreneurial spirit created fertile ground for this growth.
By the time the United States was founded, a postal system (including roads) for the distribution of mail, copyright laws to protect intellectual property, and a plethora of newspapers and books were extant. The advent of electricity spawned the telegraph, telephone, radio, and motion pictures and engendered a tidal wave of information that makes recent technological innovations seem measured by comparison. Television, computers, and the Internet would later continue this tradition of information as a driver of the country’s social, economic, and political evolution.
Fundamental to this information-enabled society is the acknowledgment of the importance and value of sharing information itself and of adopting common technology standards to further this end. Thus, IBM in computers, RCA in television, and AT&T in transistors, to cite three examples, pragmatically shared hot new technologies through adoption of open systems or licensing agreements. Their actions stimulated entire industries and innumerable start-ups that would further facilitate and propagate the flow of information.
Americans, the editors conclude, “have demonstrated a clear penchant to develop, exploit, distribute, and profit from a large array of information technologies. Now, as we enter a new century, we can view the Internet and its related technologies (e.g., telephony and computing) as a historical extension of much that has gone on in this nation for some three hundred years.”
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