ABSTRACT
This chapter revises the timeline for what Phillip Thurtle and Robert Mitchell dub the 'morphogenesis' of information as central in modern economies. Military intelligence, information processing for the trade of goods, increased state bureaucracy, 'the shift from orality to literacy', and the centrality of the service sector in post-industrialism are the key factors, they find, in our contemporary conception of information. Privateer discusses the Renaissance 'integration of human intelligence with a divine source' and believes that 'intelligence has always been a metaphor, and what it has signified, like celestial angels, capital, or information must remain invisible'. Crusoe outlines his complete theory of angelic mediation as explanation for the way the human mind processes and manages proliferating information. Wilkins revises the connection between divine intelligence and cryptography, establishing that cryptography has always been compatible with religious faith but is not divinely managed.
