The Information Age, 100 years on The rise of the computer and the digital revolution is responsible for an explosion of devices, data, and connectedness. These are all enabling what is called the dawning of the Information Age. And software designers, developers, and architects all share an important responsibility for shaping and guiding the world’s progress through this axial age into the future. However, more than 100 years ago, the work of organizing the world’s information into a single all-encompassing taxonomy had already begun. Partially influenced by the positivist doctrine of Auguste Comte, leading thinkers of the early 20th century such as the librarian Paul Otlet in Belgium, museum curator Patrick Geddes in Scotland, and educator Melvil Dewey in the US were each working to design universal classification systems that would encompass and coordinate the explosion of information appearing in libraries, museums, newspapers, magazines, and eventually even radio, movies, and television. What did we learn in the last century? What have we forgotten? How does their work affect our current trajectory in transforming the work of software and systems design and development? What can we take from Dewey, Otlet, and Geddes with us in to the next 100 years of the Information Age.

1. Revisiting Geddes' Outlook Tower
Mike AmundsenAPI Academy, CA Technologies@mamund
The Information Age, 100 years on.

3. 1890s –1940s
The first information age…

7. Camera Obscura

13. The Mondotheque

27. “I had read maybe 150 books by the time I hit 1st grade. And I already knew that the teachers were lying to me.”
-Alan Kay

42. “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
-Alan Kay

43. Collective Intelligence

50. “I decided that I would focus my career on making the world a better place for humankind. ”
-Douglas Engelbart

56. •Windowing
•Hypertext
•Graphics
•Command input
•Video conferencing
•Computer mouse
•Word processing
•Dynamic file linking
•Revision control
•Real-time collaborative editing

61. Machine Dreams

72. •Hypertext
•Hypermedia
•Hyperdata
•Transclusion
•Intertwingled

74. “The purpose of computers is freedom.”
-Ted Nelson

80. “For Doug that great demo was just the beginning.”
-Ted Nelson

84. World City

104. Inter-Galactic Network

124. The InlookRoom

129. Revisiting Geddes' Outlook Tower
Mike AmundsenAPI Academy, CA Technologies@mamund
The Information Age, 100 years on.
http://g.mamund.com/2014-apidays-paris