Frontespiece to come (by iUniverse?) Full Title page

Title half page

Information Age Tales

Frontespiece to come (by iUniverse?)

Full Title page

Information Age Tales

from

Adam's apple

to the

Apple II

and

Beyond

The forbidden fruit empowered Homo sapiens: then Info Tech expanded the sharing of knowledge to upset balances of power within major civilizations.

BRAD BRADFORD

Foreword and Epilogue

by Michael S. Hart

Name and location of publisher???

Copyright Page

(Will iUniverse handle this during design

without needing any input from me?)
DEDICATION

To
CAROL

For becoming my smart, beautiful bride in 1949,

then giving fully of herself to me and our wonderful

family incomparable love, care, feeding, fun and friendship.

Also for her perceptive editing of my copy over many

decades, especially during the writing of this book.

Epigraph

Neither to persuade nor indoctrinate—rather

to foster curiosity about past InfoTech.
Paraphrased from Henry Hobhouse’s

introduction to SEEDS OF CHANGE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication

Epigraph

       

Foreword

by Michael S. Hart, eBooks inventor and Project Gutenberg co-founder

Preface

“Knowledge is power”—Francis Bacon. Shared knowledge empowers civilizations.

.

CHAPTERS

1. Did Water Monkeys Swim Before We Spoke?

Whence cometh language, the InfoTech that let us dominate our planet? We listen, we easily hallucinate word boundaries. No spaces—such as we use in writing this—separate spoken words. Yet somehow we find it easy to make sense of speech.

2. The Gift of Memory

For millennia, mnemonics reigned over commerce, news, entertainment, and the perpetuation and refinement of crafts.

3. From Whence Cometh Indo-European Tongues?

Did a fresh-water lake community flee a saltwater surge that filled the Black Sea and scatter its language west toward the Atlantic, southeast toward India and northeast toward the Pacific?

4. Scripting Symbols of Shape

Scripting symbolic images let man communicate over space and time. Balance of power shifts from tribal chiefs to city-state warrior kings and priests.

5. Symbols of Sound Demand Analysis

The alphabet makes the pen mightier than the sword, generating the powers of knowledge needed to create and govern empires.

6. China’s InfoTech. Siblings

For centuries the Chinese keep to themselves “the wasps’ secret,” and then develop printing blocks —the precursor to Gutenberg’s wondrous invention. Paper and print nourish China’s awakening that dazzles Marco Polo.

7. Islam’s Great Gifts to the West

One precept of the Koran states that the human world's quest for knowledge leads to further knowing of Allah. Islam saves Classic wisdom and passes China’s the wasps’ secret to the West.

8. Charlemagne & Medieval Europe

The illiterate warrior king brings the scholarly monk Alcuin and his Literary Arts & Sciences School System to France to create the Carolingian renaissance. By changing the structure of words and sentences, the monk from York makes writing forever easier to read.

9. Largest Land Empire Ever

Illiterate tribes of nomad herder-hunters unite under Genghis Khan; then take less than a century to create the largest contiguous empire in world history.

10. Mongols Open the Way

They open the gate blocking direct human contact between Europe and China just in time to let I.T. wonders from the East nourish the Renaissance.

11. The Missing Keys to Science Chest

Ancient Greeks’ fear of the void blocked the advance of science for millennia, but Hindus in India and the Arabs unveil the numerical tools needed for modern science to emerge in the West.

12. Invaders from the North

Scandinavian tongues mingle with those of their Viking cousins, but the French language may exert even greater impact on the evolution of English. The Treasure of Our Tongue nourishes the rise of democracies.

13. He Unchained Books

The German goldsmith’s invention frees access to library books and breaks the chains of ignorance that held most of mankind in bondage for millennia.

14. Printers as Agents of Change

After the fall of Rome, Western culture focuses for centuries on guarding rather than expanding accumulated knowledge, but the shift from script to print amplifies, reinforces, and disseminates the power of knowledge.

15. Capitalism’s Link to Ink

Printers become “carriers of a spirit of capitalism” simply because they were capitalists themselves.

16. Shaping the English Language

William Caxton’s print shop helps standardize the “Treasure of Our Tongue,” and

Henry VIII’s first act as “Pope” orders and then funds the first printed English Bible.

17. Ottmar Mergenthaler Does It Again

Inventors strived from the early 1800s to mechanize Gutenberg’s process—unsuccessfully until Mergenthaler built his Linotype. But Ottmar’s name fell through history’s cracks.

18. ‘The Eighth Wonder of the World’

Although as late as 1980, Linotypes still set eighty percent of the world’s text, most of those once-wondrous machines had been junked before 2000.

19. Free Self-Learning Laboratories.

Public lending libraries give the ordinary citizen access to reading material previously available only to the most elite. Advances in literacy and self-education lead to a "Scientific Revolution.”

20. Linotype’s Digital Demise

Smoke and the acrid smell of hot lead in the back shop blend with the clickety-clack of a gang of wondrous Linotypes in full cry. Then—suddenly—they’re gone.

21. The Seeds of Cyberspace

“As long as scientists are free to pursue the truth wherever it may lead, new scientific knowledge will flow to those who can apply it to practical problems.”

22. Knowledge-Sharing.—Then and Now

“It is a matter of most importance that our government protect the right of every citizen to have access to knowledge without regard to an individual’s ability to pay.”

Time Line of Information Technology Revolutions
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author

About Michael Hart

Bibliography

Index

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