Chapter 2: Information Cultures: Shapes and Shapings of Information

The purpose of this chapter is to suggest a genealogy of the concept of information beyond the 20th century. The chapter discusses how the concept of information culture might provide a way of formulating such a genealogic strategy. The chapter approaches this purpose by providing a general narrative of premodern information cultures, examining works on early-modern scholars and 18th century savants and discussion of what seems to be a Foucauldian rupture in the conceptualization of information in 19th century England. The findings of the chapter are situated in the thinking that a genealogy of information would reveal that information had specific purposes in specific settings.