John’s Reviews > The Power of Knowledge: How Information and Technology Made the Modern World > Status Update

The Norwood report of 1943 claimed that there were 3 kinds of mind, abstract, mechanical, and concrete.

Alongside the continued importance of newspapers, television succeeded radio as a central determinant of the leisure time of many, a moulder of opinions & fashions, a source of conversation & controversy, an occasion for family cohesion or dispute & a major household feature generally. A force of change, a great contributor to the making of the 'consumer society' & 'window on the world' a reflector of popular taste.

A different aspect of surveillance from that represented by the census was provided by the passport, which brought together the state's monopolization of the right to approve individuals' movements with a developing precision in legal concepts of citizenship & the advancement of new technical practices. Documents were linked to individuals in a standardized fashion. Process was taken future with use of photography.

The growth of the postal system, which linked to the spread of rail & steamship services, encourage reliance on, & thus demand for, rapid & inexpensive communication, & so was followed by the development of the telegraph & then the telephone. By 1914, the Post Office was the largest single employer of Britain, with 1/5 of all public employees.

In USA, only about 2% of white America adults owned a clock & 3% a watch; %'s for African & Native Americans were far lower. The first wristwatch in 1810 for the queen of Naples.

Charles Dickens, especially in his novel Hard Times (1854), saw the emphasis on facts, & on paper information & arguments, as contributing to a deafening distancing from the real nature of social problems. This argument prefigured concerns in our own time that talk of transformation through modern technology has neglected social context & consequences.

The belief that George Everest, surveyor general of the Grand Trigonometric Survey of India established in 1817, embodied the principles of mathematical & geographical science & that his name could be recognized as a symbol of triumph of British science, helped secure the naming of Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain.

The captain of the Beagle, Robert Fitzroy placed a great reliance on barometers, helped design an inexpensive one in 1861, & writing on how best to use them, he founded a system of storm warnings, which became the basis of what he called "weather forecast". The 1st weather reporting was carried out in 1865.

America was divided in accordance with original charters & other British documents. Mapping was also linked to naming, which was another way to assert control. Maps were increasingly seen as a diplomatic tool as part of widespread long-term advances in the collection, classification, display & analysis of information in more systemic ways.