Alex Wright, The Deep History of the Information Age

August 19th, 02007 by Stewart Brand

Alex Wright

A Series of Information Explosions

As usual, microbes led the way. Bacteria have swarmed in intense networks for 3.5 billion years. Then a hierarchical form emerged with the first nucleated cells which were made up of an enclosed society of formerly independent organisms.

That’s the pattern for the evolution of information, Alex Wright said. Networks coalesce into heirarchies, which then form a new level of networks, which coalesce again, and so on…

Read the rest of Stewart Brand’s Summary

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 19th, 02007 at 8:35 am and is filed under Seminars.

  • Dan O’Donnell

    And networks seem to be an emerging next step in information visualization, processing and hierarchy. See anything by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. (Better yet, why not invite him to speak at Long Now sometime.)

  • http://blog.blaszczyk.name Szymon Blaszczyk

    This perspective is funny. Funny when you don’t know the history well. Funny when you think that Engelbart’s work is the begining :) . Thank you.

  • http://blog.m1k3y.com/?p=1218 M1K3¥’s Blog » Blog Archive » Information Through the Ages – Alex Wright’s SALT

    [...] finished listening to the latest Seminar about Long Term Thinking, Alex Wright on The Deep History of the Information Age. He skipped through the contents of his new book Glut: Mastering Information Through the [...]

  • http://artlung.com/blog/2007/10/01/the-information-age-longer-than-you-thought/ ArtLung Blog » The Information Age: longer than you thought.

    [...] Alex Wright, The Deep History of the Information Age [...]

  • http://kevindj.wordpress.com/2007/10/13/info-glut-thru-history/ Info glut thru history « Kevin’s New Projects

    [...] That’s the pattern for the evolution of information, Alex Wright said. [...]

  • http://linedandunlined.com/2009/02/17/549/ Lined & Unlined » Blog Archive » » 549

    [...] a few of the fantastic references I scribbled down while listening to this talk by Alex Wright for the Long Now Foundation’s Seminars about Long-Term Thinking series [MP3]: 1) Memory [...]

  • watson

    can’t seem to navigate to the audio for this … the Seminars page only maps back to Peter Diamand

  • http://www.facebook.com/danedormio Dane Dormio

    Alex, this talk was given five years ago now, and I hope your public speaking skills have improved since then.  I’m trying to listen to it right now for the first time, but I can hardly tolerate the chronic hesitancy.  Say what you want to say, man!  Also, since approximately fifty percent of the words used in this talk are “you know”, “sort of”, “kind of”, “um”, or “uh”, I feel like I’m only getting half as much informational value as I might otherwise.

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