The History of Information

I finished listening to the lectures from InfoSys C103: History of Information - one of the many courses that UC Berkeley makes available as a free podcast.

The scope of the course is as ambitious as the title suggests - it's a history of the interaction between humankind, information, and technology, winding for 30-odd hours through the development of writing systems, mass communication, broadcast, etc, and the way these things have shaped and been shaped by culture and human nature. Some highlights that come to mind are:

• the history of writing systems (including some great stuff about picture-writing)

• the history of the postal service (including the origins of the modern Valentine's day)

• the history of broadcast media and politics (including the history of talk radio and how the televised presidential debate changed the nature of politics in America)
  

• the history of advertising (including Roman poetry plugging face-cream)

• the evolution of the modern newspaper (including lots of cool early variations on the format that don't exist any more)

• the birth of the modern dictionary (and the philosophy behind it)

• the early years of the Philosophical Society of London

• the history of telecommunication (including stuff the social effects of the telegram, and how the first telephone exchange was invented by a paranoid mortician)

• lots about the history of the internet (including the best commentary on Wikipedia I've heard anywhere)

I could go on. It's part history, part technology, part philosophy, partly social science (the good kind). It will enrich your understanding of the modern world. I can't recommend it highly enough. Link / RSS.