Before Computers: Information Technology from Writing to the Age of Digital Data

Long before electronic computers transformed the modern world, people developed sophisticated ways to record, organize, search, and retrieve information. From writing systems and libraries to filing cabinets, punch cards, indexes, and catalogues, these earlier technologies laid the foundations for today's information society.
Stephen Robertson traces the history of information technology across thousands of years, showing how successive innovations changed the ways knowledge was created, stored, and shared. Rather than viewing the digital revolution as a complete break with the past, he reveals its deep roots in earlier systems of documentation, classification, and communication.
Combining the history of technology with the history of ideas, Before Computers offers a compelling account of humanity's long quest to manage information and demonstrates that many of the challenges associated with the digital age have much older origins.