The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. The Information: a History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick – review | Alok Jha | Science. Cuneiform is as much a part of the story of our species' mastery of information as computers and smartphones. Photograph: Araldo De Luca/Corbis This is the "information age", we all know that. Laptops and smartphones wing uncountable amounts of information between us, across the airwaves and down wires and optical fibres.
Bank transactions, weather reports, news stories, love stories and break-ups are being communicated through the ubiquitous ability of the machines around us to process information. But why should we call this the information age rather than, say, the decades after Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1450 and began the publishing revolution?
What about when the first fragments of paper were made more than 2,000 years ago, allowing (relatively) easy sharing of stories or administrative records? Or how about the earliest known records of writing, Sumerian clay tablets etched with cuneiform script? Charles Duhigg, author of the Power of Habit. Mr Nice: An Autobiography - Howard Marks. The hasheesh eater : being passages from the life of a Pythagorean. Yes Man by Danny Wallace - Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists.