The Modern Invention of Information – Ron Day

This links to the literary review of Ron Day\’s Works where I try to synthesize the most relevant points of his oeuvre.

Ron Day has been one of the best discoveries I made during the time I am spending in the PhD program of the UCLA Information Studies department. \”The Modern Invention of Information\” was one of the core readings for Prof. Leah Lievrouw\’s course Theoretical Traditions in Information Studies (FALL 2012), and I chose Ron Day as the IS author for the final literary review.

His critical perspective exposed me to a wide range of reflections about the main assumptions that inform the way we understand the concept of information. Everything goes back to the birth of Information Theory by Shannon and Weaver, and the expansion of some of those ideas to other realms by the hand of Wiener\’s cybernetic theory. Ron Day analyses all these elements from a critical point of view, exposing how some of those ideas can limit our understanding of human processes like communication and information processing. Introducing critical thinkers like Heidegger and Althusser, Day manages to break some of the reifying boundaries of early information theorists.

To download the complete review here.

An alternative review of his most relevant book, The Modern Invention of Information, can be found here