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History of Information

Course Description

Three hours of lectures per week.

This course surveys selected highlights in the long history of "information technologies," from the earliest writing systems to print and broadcast to the advent of the computer and the Internet. In each instance, we'll be concerned not just with what and when but with how and why -- how much of the effect of these developments are built into the nature of technologies themselves, how much arise out of the way societies decide to use them?