The Control Revolution Online is a student project website dedicated to late author James R. Beniger’s book entitled The Control Revolution: Technological and. Beniger, J. R. (). The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society,. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. The Control Revolution. Week 10 Reading for Foundations of Computing and Communication. From: Beniger, James R. (). The Control Revolution. Harvard.
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Beniger traces the causes of change from the middle to late ninteenth century — to a crisis of control — generated by the industrial revolution in manufacturing and transportation. This is a great book! This is an excellent synthesis of great information from a number of different fields.
The Control Revolution
Perhaps WalMart store layout DOES seem Freudian even now, but this book unmasks modernity and uncovers the roots of everyday life, and in the process makes the familiar seem foreign and the natural seem contrived. But such technologies are best seen not as causes but as consequences of societal change, as natural extensions of the Control Revolution already in progress.
As we have seen, what began as a crisis of safety on the railroads in the early s hit distribution in the s, production in the late s, and marketing and the control of consumption in the early s.
Beniger exhaustively surveys the industrial landscape, from materials processing to production to transport to distribution, digging up every kind of feedback mechanism from thermostats to cereal box-top contests and placing it in the context of an ongoing narrative of broadening and deepening control capacities.
Dec 21, Emily rated it it was amazing. Get to Know Us. Reading Beniger’s Control Revolution is a bit like reading Hans Moravec and others who see the world as an evolution of artificial intelligence. He proposes two methods for controlling large social systems: Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account.
Now my secret adoration for the postal and library systems can finally fee I think I was in dire need for a book like this, seeing how much it helped me in the understanding of certain ideas. Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features: Explore the Home Gift Guide. Two things also seemed to be missing.
AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally. Technology is the external intension of the natural process. The response to this crisis amounted to a revolution in societal control. Add both to Cart Add both to List. Scores of problems arose: Because technological innovation is increasingly a collective, cumulative effort whose results must be taught and diffused, it also generates an increased need for technologies of information storage and retrieval.
From its origins contdol the last decades of the nineteenth century the Control Revolution has continued unabated to this day and in fact has accelerated recently with the development of microprocessing technologies. Kirsten rated it really liked it Oct 19, How may we come to understand the past so that we may shape the future?
Its role was to fill the gap between availability of numerous technological possibilities which have occurred by the industrial revolution eevolution had taken place a century ago and the immature social infrastructure that blocked their realization. It goes back to the Cybernetic idea that it is almost impossible to tell an internal mental event from the real world from the perspective of the observer – http: Much recommended for people who would like to exercise their grey cells.
Wholesalers scramble to integrate movement of goods and cash among hundreds of manufacturers and thousands of retailers.
The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society
Read it once and it changed the arc of my thinking and my professional career. Steve rated it it was amazing Jun 02, This is a history of the technologies and techniques of controlling industrial processes. Alan Brenner rated it really liked it Jan 31, These innovations, effected by transporters, producers, distributors, and marketers alike, reached something of a climax by the s. It is a control technology in itself. So what is the moral? Beniger’s book is really a study controk systems – systems of production and control and the cycle that forces progress.
In fact Beniger would have it that the information had to accompany the industrial revolution for beinger tools made organizations controk capable or powerful. Along the way he touches on many fascinating topics: Withoutabox Submit to Film Festivals.
Communication and computation technologies had grown separately until digital computers emerged after the Second World War.
The Control Revolution — James R. Beniger | Harvard University Press
That might complicate the picture of a self-organized informational society some, and I guess Beniger prefered to stick with his vision. I have read a lot of material in the economic development, IT, and cybernetics areas and nothing else even comes close. The story of the achievement of science in physical control is evidence of the possibility of control in social affairs. Beniger’s beinger will take its place alongside the four or five books of the past twenty years which have most influenced our understanding of current changes, not just in the United States but the industrial world as a whole.
ONLY SINCE World Revklution II have the industrial economies of the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and Japan appeared to give way to information societies, so named because the bulk of their labor force engages in informational activities and the wealth thus generated comes increasingly from informational goods and services.
Shopbop Designer Revoluiton Brands. His case studies are fascinating – he makes Quaker Oats seem exotic, and the origins of WalMart store layout seem Freudian.
The Control Revolution
To ask other readers questions about The Control Revolutionplease sign up. Each of the major sectors of the economy tended to exploit a particular area of information technology: See all 9 reviews. Similarly, the increased reliability of production and distribution flows has increased the economic returns on informational activities like planning, scheduling, and forecasting. Just couldn’t wade through this one. Despite the Control Revolution’s importance for understanding contemporary society, however, especially the continuing impact of computers and microprocessors, the most useful lesson relates to our understanding of social life more generally.
I think I was in dire need for a book like this, seeing how much it helped me in the understanding of certain ideas. Wood pulp, rag paper. Perhaps most pervasive of all rationalization is the increasing tendency to regulate interpersonal relationships in terms of a formal set of impersonal, quantifiable, and objective criteria, changes that greatly facilitate control by both government and business.