Geschiedenis van informatie en documenten

Introduction and Historical Context The chapter provides a concise historical framework for the study of information and documents. It emphasizes that many contemporary ideas about information are not entirely new and go back to centuries-old patterns in thought and practice. Different forms of historical attention to information exist: history of libraries, archives, and information services; information policy and infrastructures; history of books, printing, and reading; history of information technologies (not just digital); history of information studies and professions; and studies on the cultural and social context of information use. An important point is that history is often studied through documents: the ways people have produced, stored, managed, and disseminated information. Floridi ($2014$) distinguishes prehistory, history, and hyperhistory as important phases in a broader theoretical framework about information in society. This framework helps to place contemporary problems in a long-term context and to identify the continuity of information issues.

Three Developed Themes and the Structure of the Chronology

The treatise divides history into five periods: prehistory and the ancient world, the Middle Ages, the age of printing (incl. Renaissance and Enlightenment), the age of mass communication (long $19^{th}$ century), and the documentation/documentary state to the present. In this approach, emphasis is placed on documents and systems related to them, as opposed to a purely thematic treatment of information technologies. Furthermore, it is emphasized that literacy, writing, printing, mass communication, and network-based information carriers have each brought forth new infrastructures and practices, but that historical developments are not uniform geographically and temporally.

Prehistory and the Ancient World: From Oral to Written Information

The beginning of information history lies with spoken language, but the actual history of information begins with recorded information and documents. The period begins with the first recorded graphic work and ends with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in $476$ CE. The oldest artifacts that can be considered documents are cave paintings and rock carvings, older than $40,000$ years. The Lascaux paintings are approximately $20,000$ years old. Proto-writing, dating back to about $7,000$ years ago, includes encouraging examples such as bone labels in tombs and tablet-like artifacts that enabled overcoming time and space. The term proto-writing refers to functional aspects of signs and symbols; true writing was only developed more than $5,000$ years ago. The oldest accurately dated written texts come from Uruk (ca. $3300$ BCE) and used cuneiform on clay tablets. In Egypt, hieroglyphs, hieratic, and demotic scripts were written on papyrus, wood, and stone. Mesopotamian documents are often linked to palaces and temples, with early collections possibly making no clear distinction between library and archive. Proto-writing remains relevant as a term for contemporary systems such as computer screen icons and diagrams. In Abydos (Egypt), bones with inscriptions are found that show a precursor to hieroglyphs; Tartaria tablets from Romania are mentioned as a possible early writing direction, although this topic is controversial.

Writing, Alphabets, and the First Libraries in Antiquity

• Writing developed independently in multiple places: Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica. The first accurately dated written texts come from Uruk around $3300$ BCE. Cuneiform script evolved from pictograms via ideograms to a complex logo-syllabic culture, used for languages such as Sumerian and Akkadian.

• In Egypt, hieroglyphs, hieratic, and later demotic script emerged, often on papyrus and materialized in temples and tomb culture.

• In the oldest European context, scripts arose in Crete (Cretan hieroglyphic, Linear A) and later Linear B (early Greek). Linear B was rediscovered and decoded as Old Greek in the $1950$s; Linear A remains partially unreadable, and Cretan hieroglyphs are seen as proto-writing.

• The development of the alphabet plays a crucial role: the Phoenician alphabet around $1000$ BCE introduces a small, flexible symbol system that can write languages and enable book ordering. This alphabet influenced Aramaic/Hebrew and Greek and led to the first large-scale alphabetical book ordering.

• Greek library culture flourished in Pergamon, Antioch, Pella, and Alexandria. The Great Library of Alexandria ($4^{th}$ century BCE) is praised as a center of knowledge; Pinakes (bibliography) and a storage system were created by Callimachus (ca. $310$ BCE–ca. $240$ BCE), considered an early modern bibliography environment.

• Roman influence brought publicly accessible libraries and an extensive book trade system; the codex (predecessor of today's book) emerged from wooden writing boards, later replaced by parchment pages. The transition from scroll to codex was gradual, occurring between ca. $100$–$500$ CE. The Codex Sinaiticus is a well-known example from the $4^{th}$ century.

The Middle Ages and the Rise of Literate Infrastructure

In the Byzantine Empire, classical texts were preserved, with important monastic and academic libraries. During this period, a manuscript culture developed with parchment as the carrier and codex as the form. Paper eventually gained a foothold in Europe in the $12^{th}$ century via Chinese invention; ceramics and calligraphy remained important cultural practices. Calendars and saints' calendars guided the classification and storage of works in religious institutions; universities emerged and fostered the need for copies of texts.

The Age of Print and the Information Infrastructure

Printing with movable type was practiced in China long before it reached Europe; the oldest dated printed book is the $Diamond Sutra$ from $868$. In Europe, the printing press arrived via Johannes Gutenberg around $1447$ in Mainz; Caxton set up the first printing press on English soil in $1476$. Printing facilitated the production of multiple identical copies, which necessitated bibliographical tools like catalogs, bibliographies, and indexes, and caused the so-called information explosion. Gesner's $Bibliotheca Universalis$ from $1545$ became a milestone in universal bibliography and led to national bibliographies such as Maunsell's $Catalogue of English Printed Bookes$ from $1595$. Classification designs were developed by thinkers like Bacon and Leibniz. In the $17^{th}$ century, rapid printing techniques and lithography developed, allowing text and images to be produced simultaneously; this contributed to the rise of scientific journals such as Philosophical Transactions (Royal Society) in $1665$ and Journal des Savants in $1665$.

The Enlightenment and the New Library Role

During the Enlightenment, major reference works emerged such as Chambers' Cyclopedia ($1728$), Diderot's Encyclopédie ($1761$), Johnson's Dictionary ($1755$), and Britannica ($1768$). National libraries and memory institutions provided the basis for a public or professional audience. The concept of bibliographical principles and classification grew; Panizzi's rules for cataloging ($1841$) and Jewett for Smithsonian are early modern influences. The card index, catalog, and categories became supporting instruments for information management; this continued as the $19^{th}$ century progressed.

The Age of Mass Communication and the 19th Century

The Industrial Revolution brought mass communication and the infrastructure for information infrastructure in the $19^{th}$ century. The steam press evolved from ca. $1814$ (Koenig's steam press) to enormous production speeds; conversion from hundreds to thousands of pages per hour. Courier and transport revolution (steamships, trains) connected regions with produced information. A greater variety of books and serial publications emerged, along with specialized scientific and professional journals. Telecommunication and photography design appeared; photography emerged in the $1840$s, and forty years later, photographs were presented in printed documents. The $1830$s saw the rise of chemical abstractions and later medical indexes; ideas about bibliography and classification were further developed, with Dewey's Decimal Classification from $1876$ as one of the key points. The $19^{th}$ century also saw the rise of library services (national libraries like the Library of Congress in $1800$, public libraries, academic and professional associations) and the rise of indexing and abstracting services (Chemisches Zentralblatt $1830$, Index Medicus $1879$).

The Documentation and Information Domain in the 20th Century

In the $20^{th}$ century, new analog documents emerged: photography, film, sound recording, microforms, and later audio and videotape. Mechanization of documentation emerged via punched cards and other tapes that enabled complex searches using Boolean logic. Examples such as Lloyd's Register show a coordination system of punched cards. The emergence of the digital computer led to the convergence of formats: text, images, sound, and video became digital. New intellectual tools such as faceted classification and thesauri were introduced to manage the increasing collections. Different disciplines brought their own information services; Chemical Abstracts is an example. During this period, the field of information and knowledge management grew, and the idea of an information society emerged, partly due to the rise of online searching and networks.

Information Culture, the Mundaneum, and the “Documentation Movement”

At the end of the $19^{th}$ century and the beginning of the $20^{th}$ century, thinkers like Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine attempted to realize a universal bibliographical order through the Mundaneum and related projects. Their work forms the basis for modern information studies and the sciences of information and documentation. The rise of the internet and social media at the end of the $20^{th}$ century has led to a potential shift considered by some to be as profound as the printing press or writing itself.

Summary and Lessons from the Past

The chapter recognizes that economic, social, technical, and academic developments are always intertwined with the growth of knowledge and the technologies that seek to control information. History shows that environments and systems continuously function in interaction with each other, and that lessons from the past can help to better understand contemporary and future information challenges. Figure $2.11$ shows Paul Otlet in $1937$, and Figure $2.12$ shows Henri La Fontaine; the images mark the visible dedication of early information pioneers to systems thinking and knowledge organization.

Philosophy of Information: A Brief Exploration of the Connection Between Science and Philosophy

Today, there is a clear call for a philosophy of information that brings together the foundations of what we know, how we acquire knowledge, and how meaning, truth, and distinction are understood. One of the central points is that information science does not have a single, uniform philosophy, but integrates insights from various philosophical traditions. The three core areas of philosophy relevant to information: metaphysics/ontology (what is information, what exists?), epistemology (what can we know and how can we be sure of it?), and ethics (what is the correct use of information, including censorship and privacy?). These themes have practical implications for data analysis, knowledge management, and the design of information systems. For an accessible overview, reference is made to works such as Craig, Grayling, and Nagel, and to more specialized sources such as Furner ($2010$) on the relationship between philosophy and information science. An important line in Furner's argument is that there are two aspects: (i) analyzing what the informative disciplines as such mean from a philosophical perspective; and (ii) analyzing the nature of entities crucial to the field, such as data and information. The subsequent chapters discuss themes such as realism, positivism, and constructivism, and the nature of data and information. In summary, the philosophy of information provides tools to examine the theoretical foundations of the field and to guide practical implementations.

References and Reading Horizon

Important sources mentioned in this chapter include Blair et al. ($2021$) Information: a historical companion; Gleick ($2011$) The information: a history, a theory, a flood; Suarez & Woudhuysen (eds) ($2013$) The book: a global history; and an extensive reserve of works on the history of books, libraries, printing, and information technologies. These works provide context, examples, and in-depth analyses to support the understanding of information in different periods, and offer institutional and cultural perspectives that remain relevant for contemporary discussions about information and policy.

Important Dates and Concepts (summarized in LaTeX format)

• First dated written texts: $3300$ BCE from Uruk (cuneiform on clay)

• Prototypical script/proto-writing examples: Tartaria tablets (Romania) and bone labels from Abydos, ca. $3320$ BCE (Egyptian proto-writing)

• Origin of alphabet: earliest alphabet (Phoenician) around $1000$ BCE

• Greek alphabet: ca. $730$ BCE (first known Greek alphabetic inscription) and possible invention between $1100-800$ BCE

• Great Library of Alexandria: $4^{th}$ century BCE

• Domesday Book: $1086$

• Diamond Sutra: $868$ (first dated printed book)

• Gutenberg: ca. $1447$ (Introduction of printing press in Europe)

• Caxton in England: $1476$ (first printing house in England)

• Gesner: $1545$ (Bibliotheca Universalis)

• Maunsell: $1595$ (Catalogue of English Printed Bookes)

• Dewey Decimal Classification: $1876$

• Panizzi’s $91$ rules: $1841$ (British Museum)

• Indexing and abstracting: Chemisches Zentralblatt $1830$, Index Medicus $1879$

• $19^{th}$ century: steam press ca. $1814$ (Koenig) and later speed increases; telecommunications and photography in the $1840$s-$1870$s

• Mundaneum and Otlet/La Fontaine: early documentation efforts towards universal bibliography

Note: All years in this summary are presented in the format $year$ to comply with the notation requirement for mathematical/button-like expressions that must be in LaTeX.

Practical and Ethical Implications

• Historical perspectives emphasize the continuity of information challenges such as organization, accessibility, reliability, and authority, despite technological shifts. This suggests that contemporary problems such as metadata, interoperability, and privacy have existed longer than the media that facilitate them.

• Philosophy of information emphasizes the need for an explicit substantiation of how we construct knowledge, how we give meaning to information, and how we shape the rights and duties of information use in a free and responsible information society.

Connect with Later Lessons and Modern Relevance

The history of information shows how different systems – from papyrus to digital networks – constantly enable new ways of organizing, indexing, and accessing information. The understanding of bibliographical instruments, definitions of classification, and the development of knowledge organizations remains relevant for contemporary databases, search engines, and information systems. The naming of the