Information Revolutions (HA)

Subject associations
HIS 298
Term
Fall 2024
Instructors
Matthew L. Jones
Registrar description

Surveying key moments from the 19th century to the present, this course tracks how networked communications, numerical calculation, symbolic reasoning, and information processing converged to create contemporary information technologies. The course introduces students to the major kinds of historical inquiry-philosophical, engineering, labor, material, social, gender, legal, and cultural-needed for studying information technologies in the last 150 years. Topics include Silicon Valley, software engineering, PCs, hacking, artificial intelligence, information, cryptography, outsourcing, privacy, information warfare, social networks, surveillance