ABSTRACT
The relationship between information and power forms one of the most ¬complex of all information discourses. This chapter focuses on the terminology or technologies of information and power, and rather more upon their social and cultural drivers. James Cortada has explored a national history of information in the United States of America since 1870 and argues, convincingly and not inconsequentially, that it is possible to have differing national histories of information. In 1853, The Times newspaper in London was writing of ‘an age of information’ unlike anything experienced before. Significantly, Anthony Grafton’s ‘masters of information that rule the world’ need not only be government or elites, nor does ‘master’ need to be gender specific. Contemporaries did not style themselves as ‘information experts’, but there is little doubt that many were aware of the power of information and of its influence.
