Birth of Modern Facts

James W. Cortada is Senior Research Fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. He formerly worked at IBM Corporation in a variety of sales, consulting, research, management, and executive positions. His research and writing have focused on the business history of information technology and in the role of information in modern societies. He is the author or editor of more than three dozen books and serves on the editorial board of key journals devoted to the history of information and its technologies. Most recently he co-authored with William Aspray, Fake News Nation: The Long History of Lies and Misinterpretations in America (R&L, 2019) and From Urban Legends to Political Fact-Checking (Springer, 2019); and authored Building Blocks of Society: History, Information Ecosystems, and Infrastructures (R&L, 2021).

• Preface1.How Librarians, Scholars, and the New Professions Defined Modern Information2.Second Industrial Revolution Encounters Information3.How Librarians Organized Information4.Early Encounters by Computer Builders5.Mathematicians and Statisticians Create New Tools6.Scientists and Medical Experts Shape Information7.New Business and Government Information Ecosystems8.What Information Economists Created9.Contributions of Political Scientists and Historians to Modern Information 10.How Information EvolvedEndnotesBibliographic EssayIndex

Cortada provides an eloquent and accessible examination of nearly two centuries of information collection, processing, and use in the professions--from librarians, physicians, and scientists to mathematicians, government bureaucrats, and economists. Throughout, his approach is unique, and his insights are profound.