$27.44 with 17 percent savings
List Price: $32.95

The List Price is the suggested retail price of a new product as provided by a manufacturer, supplier, or seller. Except for books, Amazon will display a List Price if the product was purchased by customers on Amazon or offered by other retailers at or above the List Price in at least the past 90 days. List prices may not necessarily reflect the product's prevailing market price.
Learn more
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns
FREE delivery Tuesday, May 14 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35. Order within 2 hrs 52 mins
Only 17 left in stock (more on the way).
$$27.44 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$27.44
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Ships from
Amazon.com
Ships from
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Payment
Secure transaction
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Explore Amazon Book Clubs
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Alex Wright
+ Follow
More books from this author
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Informatica: Mastering Information through the Ages second edition

by Alex Wright (Author)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 32 ratings
See all formats and editions
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$27.44","priceAmount":27.44,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"27","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"44","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"2OnQiY6D5mqXNun%2BlJ7ONXoSNtIniH7QT%2BuJ9MzhgdzIFvgdkw8hCwJsTCQeQmr8SdiRUzYWqhJBnLWot0AonnLTS%2F3%2Bp2l0O0CfDgqwX5RSdXOw8NhfZ6EVZLEmTTYgPXWtrQnp8bqdQQ9PlteKMg%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

Informatica―the updated edition of Alex Wright's previously published Glut―continues the journey through the history of the information age to show how information systems emerge. Today's "information explosion" may seem like a modern phenomenon, but we are not the first generation―or even the first species―to wrestle with the problem of information overload. Long before the advent of computers, human beings were collecting, storing, and organizing information: from Ice Age taxonomies to Sumerian archives, Greek libraries to Christian monasteries.

Wright weaves a narrative that connects such seemingly far-flung topics as insect colonies, Stone Age jewelry, medieval monasteries, Renaissance encyclopedias, early computer networks, and the World Wide Web. He suggests that the future of the information age may lie deep in our cultural past.

We stand at a precipice struggling to cope with a tsunami of data. Wright provides some much-needed historical perspective. We can understand the predicament of information overload not just as the result of technological change but as the latest chapter in an ancient story that we are only beginning to understand.

Read more Read less
Previous page
  1. ISBN-10
    1501768670
  2. ISBN-13
    978-1501768675
  3. Edition
    second edition
  4. Publisher
    Cornell University Press
  5. Publication date
    June 15, 2023
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    6 x 0.64 x 9 inches
  8. Print length
    282 pages
  9. See all details
Next page
Amazon First Reads | Editors' picks at exclusive prices

Frequently bought together

Informatica: Mastering Information through the Ages
$27.44
Get it as soon as Tuesday, May 14
Only 17 left in stock (more on the way).
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
Libraries in the Information Age: An Introduction and Career Exploration (Library and Information Science Text Series)
$54.13
Get it as soon as Wednesday, May 15
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
Cataloging Library Resources: An Introduction (Volume 3) (Library Support Staff Handbooks, 3)
$44.00
Get it as soon as Wednesday, May 15
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Details
Added to Cart
Some of these items ship sooner than the others.
Show details Hide details
Choose items to buy together.

Editorial Reviews

Review

An astonishingly wide-ranging book, Glut shows how the organization and management of information is simultaneously social, technical, political, economic, and environmental. In a series of engaging, chronologically organized tales, Alex Wright synthesizes evolutionary biology, archaeology, history of science, history of the book, intellectual history, and information studies.

-- Shannon Christine Mattern, The New School, author of Code and Clay, Data and Dirt

Review

An astonishingly wide-ranging book, Glut shows how the organization and management of information is simultaneously social, technical, political, economic, and environmental. In a series of engaging, chronologically organized tales, Alex Wright synthesizes evolutionary biology, archaeology, history of science, history of the book, intellectual history, and information studies.

-- Shannon Christine Mattern, The New School, author of Code and Clay, Data and Dirt

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cornell University Press; second edition (June 15, 2023)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 282 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1501768670
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1501768675
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.7 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.64 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 32 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Alex Wright

Alex Wright

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Alex Wright is a writer, designer, and researcher who has held leadership roles at Google, Instagram, and The New York Times, among others. He has written two books on the history of the information age, and more than 100 articles for publications including The New York Times, Salon.com, The Believer, Harvard Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, and elsewhere. His first book, Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages, was hailed by The Los Angeles Times as a "penetrating and highly insightful meditation on our information age and its historical roots." He holds a PhD in Design from Carnegie Mellon University. Alex currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife, two boys, and three banjos.

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
32 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Robert Morris
5.0 out of 5 stars How and why "the torch song of technological transcendentalism has passed from the visionary fringe into cultural maintream"
Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2011
Verified Purchase
Alex Wright explains that in this volume, he approaches the story of the information age "by squarely looking backward" and along the way, he (and his reader) will "traverse a number of topics not usually brought together in one volume: evolutionary biology, cultural anthropology, mythology, monasticism, the history of printing, the scientific method, eighteenth-century taxonomies, Victorian librarianship, and the early history of the computer, to name a few." It is an especially exciting journey during which he explores separate but related subjects such as these:

o Creation and subsequent development of language and information
o Corresponding increase of information sources and documentation (e.g. papyrus, codex, printing press)
o Corresponding increase of difficulty with managing information (i.e. accessing, processing, organizing, updating, and distributing it)
o Emergence of communities that accelerate communication, cooperation, and collaboration
o Process by which the human race has reached a "precipice" between "the near limitless capacity of computer networks and the real physical limits of human comprehension"

Wright challenges his reader to ask: Have the nature and extent of information (i.e. its scope, depth, and volume) exceeded our ability to process it, much less manage it? Here's a related question: If so, will the need for hierarchical control systems preclude man's "deepest rooted social instincts"? Wright asserts -- and I agree -- that those instincts are returning to the fore, "as people adapt new technologies to invoke the ancient emotional circuitry that carried us through the age before symbols. The future of memory may lie not in our heads but in our hearts." I prefer to think that what we have is not a glut of information but, rather, a glut of as-yet unrealized potentialities. By reading Alex Wright's book, we gain a much deeper understanding of where we have been and thus are better prepared for what has yet to be achieved.
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
David R Woodbury
4.0 out of 5 stars A good history of the internet and information science - the ...
Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2015
Verified Purchase
A good history of the internet and information science - the sections covering Xanadu and the pre-PARC days of computing are extremely well written and filled in some gaps for me that I wasn't aware of. I was hoping for additional depth on the semantic web and taxonomies, particularly with respect to what they can or are expected to enable.
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
S. Gordon
5.0 out of 5 stars Get Glut
Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2007
Verified Purchase
I have a lot of books in my `to read' pile, but Glut went straight to the top. I knew it was going to be well researched and insightful, but I was surprised at how much fun I had reading it. I'm a big fan of arcane knowledge and quotable tidbits, and this book was full of both. Thanks to Alex for unearthing this knowledge that I now dispense liberally.

Hard to think of a page-turner in the field of information management, but one exists, and Alex Wright wrote it.

I'm not a big one for building a personal library. i usually read a book, then gift to a friend with the condition that they then pass it on. In this case, you may borrow my copy of Glut, but it needs to be returned to me. It's earned a spot on my bookshelf!
13 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Rebecca Mugridge
4.0 out of 5 stars Recommended for all librarians!
Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2013
Verified Purchase
I bought this book in preparation for a conference in which the author was the keynote speaker. I enjoyed this book; it gave me a lot to think about. As a cataloger I was impressed with and gratified by the emphasis on organizing information.
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Martin A. Miller
3.0 out of 5 stars The jury is still out.
Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2011
First, I have not read this book. I probably will; in fact, it's on my wish list. But, in searching through the index of this book, I see no mention of Alan Turing whatsoever. More shocking, no mention of Claude Shannon whose pioneering work with "information" was transcendent and revolutionary. Shannon first coined the word "bit" to describe the most basic unit of information in his groundbreaking 1948 paper entitled "A Mathematical Theory of Communication". Without it, and his work, there would be none of the electronic devices we take for granted today. I was quite disappointed that a work purporting to be about "Mastering Information..." has nothing to say about Claude Shannon, arguably, the most important figure in "information".

For a truly brilliant treatise on information, James Gleick's recent "The Information" is a must read.
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Alexander Monea
1.0 out of 5 stars This book might be good for people with a vague interest in the topic ...
Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2015
Verified Purchase
This book might be good for people with a vague interest in the topic or for a coffee table book. I bought it thinking that it coming from Cornell would mean that it was academic scholarship. It is not. It has almost no citations, and flies across time giving only the most cursory examinations of the technologies it looks at. While this might be fine in some cases, it is particularly problematic because it presents summaries of objects that seem factually inaccurate and I cannot for the life of me figure out where he got the information so that I might verify it.
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Tiago
5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible journey through the history of information technology
Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2018
Verified Purchase
I’ve read a lot of books on info technology and knowledge management, and this is one of the absolute best. The further back in time he goes, the more insight and fascination Wright evokes, revealing that our relationship to information is as old as life itself. I can’t recommend this book enough for anyone seeking to understand how humans relate to and manage the information they have always been surrounded with.
Helpful
 Report
Andrew
4.0 out of 5 stars Who'd have though information management could be so interesting...
Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2013
Verified Purchase
The style is reasonably light for topic this has potential to be very dry.
The author does a good job making his point. After finishing a chapter it was clear what the key concepts were etc.
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report