ABSTRACT
Every age has been an information age. When citizens verbally pass on news, send letters, visit neighbors, or distribute and read written reports of local events, they participate in information systems that order communication and affect the community psychologically, economically, socially, and intel lectually. As new technologies develop and old technologies become obso lete, economic models, global relationships, and social attitudes change. What is noteworthy about the late seventeenth and early eighteenth cen turies is that the writing of the period reflects the impact of informational change more visibly than previous literatures. By the late seventeenth century information emerges as a concept, and almost immediately it is imagined as a physically and psychologically threatening entity, at once material and immaterial, with the capability of overloading the human body and intellect. Rather than simply record their fear of such a threat, however, authors of the period demonstrate creative methods of information management, cri tiquing and modifying their information systems by providing alternative models of literacy for the reading public.
