The Control Revolution

Auteur

James R. Beniger is Associate Professor at the Annenberg School of Communications, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Texte du rabat

'This book is designed to be the synthetic work on the 'Information Society' and its origins, and by all rights it will be. It is beautifully done and is built to last...Everything about the book is intelligent.' -Critical Review

Résumé
Beniger traces the origin of the Information Society to major economic and business crises of the 1800s. Inevitably the Industrial Revolution, with its ballooning use of energy to drive material processes, required a corresponding growth in the exploitation of information.

Contenu

1. Introduction PART I: Living Systems, Technology, and the Evolution of Control 2. Programming and Control: The Essential Life Process 3. Evolution of Control: Culture and Society PART II: Industrialization, Processing Speed, and the Crisis of control 4. From tradition to rationally: Distributing Control 5. Toward Industrialization: Controlling Energy and Speed 6. Industrial Revolution and the Crisis of Control PART III: Toward an Information Society: From Control Crisis to Control Revolution 7. Revolution in Control of Mass Production and Distribution 8. Revolution in Control of Mass Consumption 9. Revolution in Generalized Control: Data Processing and Bureaucracy 10. Conclusions: Control as Engine of the Information Society References Index