Historiographica
Introducing the history of visual information
historiographica.net
Mark Rickerby, 2008

HOW OLD IS THE INTERNET?
ST 1970
JANUARY 1
Dawn of the Unix Epoch
“Information architecture”
Computing comes of age

OR IS IT?
Few “new” ideas are as new
as we may think...
Who invented hypertext?
Tim Berners Lee?
Ted Nelson?
Douglas Engelbart?

Changing Metaphors
Discovery or invention?
1700s : universe as a clock
1800s : universe as a heat engine
1900s : universe as an information
processor

Logic Machines
Gottfried Leibniz, 1679
“An Introduction to a Secret Encyclopedia”
Resolving human ideas into a primitive set of
(easily transferable) symbols
Freeing information from the bounds of the book

The Victorian Information Age
Babbage designs the first
programmable computers
Telegraph and electricity grids
Discovery of the electromagnetic
spectrum

The Modernist Convergence
1910's to 1930's
Creative media experimentation
Social consequences of design
Transfer of ideas between Europe
and America

The Visual Information Age
1933, Harry Beck designs map of
London Underground
1934, Paul Otlet describes the
Radiated Library
1936, Otto Neurath forms Isotype

WORDS MAKE DIVISION
PICTURES MAKE CONNECTION
- Otto Neurath

The Radiated Library
CINEMA, PHONOGRAPHS, RADIO,
TELEVISION: these instruments, taken as
substitutes for the book, will in fact become
the new book, the most powerful works for
the diffusion of human thought. This will be
the radiated library and the televised book.
- Paul Otlet

The information age is a myth
A cultural fabrication
If we donʻt document the REAL
history of design are we doomed
to repeat past mistakes?