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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, 2007 at 8:35 am and is filed under Seminars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “Alex Wright, The Deep History of the Information Age”

  1. Dan O'Donnell Says:

    Posted on August 19th, 2007 at 9:05 pm

    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.)

  2. Szymon Blaszczyk Says:

    Posted on August 23rd, 2007 at 3:31 am

    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.

  3. M1K3¥’s Blog » Blog Archive » Information Through the Ages - Alex Wright’s SALT Says:

    Posted on September 27th, 2007 at 1:28 am

    [...] 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 [...]

  4. ArtLung Blog » The Information Age: longer than you thought. Says:

    Posted on October 1st, 2007 at 10:13 pm

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

  5. Info glut thru history « Kevin’s New Projects Says:

    Posted on October 13th, 2007 at 8:21 am

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

  6. Lined & Unlined » Blog Archive » » 549 Says:

    Posted on February 17th, 2009 at 6:25 am

    [...] 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 [...]

  7. watson Says:

    Posted on April 21st, 2009 at 2:49 pm

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

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