Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
particular evidences a fascination with a world full of signs that can
be decoded and an anxiety, or even despair, about the ability to
uncover the true nature of things.
capitalism and information technology
The later nineteenth century saw the development of new digital
office technologies, intended to manage the increasing, and increas-
ingly complex, amount of information with which business was
confronted as a result of its massive expansion under the aegis of
monopoly capitalism. These included machines for calculation,
sign production and tabulation, such as cash registers, calculating
machines, filing systems, tabulating machines and typewriters. Each
of these devices answered the need of an increasingly complex
capitalist system to produce, circulate and control signs and to
render other phenomena into signs, for those purposes. Calculators,
such as the Comptometer developed by Felt and Tarrant (illus.
),
the Adder-Lister from Burroughs Adding Machine Company, and
cash registers, such as those developed by National Cash Register,
helped businesses and shops manage their affairs in ever faster and
more intricate markets. Many of the companies responsible for
manufacturing and marketing these devices were later involved in
the burgeoning computer industry that emerged after the Second
World War. Most famous was C-T-R or the Computing-Tabulating-
Recording Company, which Thomas Watson Sr joined after he was
fired from his position as general manager at National Cash Register,
and which was renamed in
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by Watson, International Business
Machines, or as it is still known today, IBM.
The tabulating machine (illus.
1924
) was developed in response to
one of the main issues of industrialization. One of the results of
the Industrial Revolution was a great movement of population
from agrarian communities to urban centres. This had the effect of
producing both a new kind of individual and a new mass society.
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