The ideas of information as an autonomous variable and of the primacy of theoretical knowledge have been recurrent themes in discussions of the information society. In this series of eight essays, Julian Warner provides a contrasting perspective on: Developing a manifesto for the study of information technologies in human history, Ways in which information technology is differentiated from standard economic concept of productive technology, Historical perspective to copyright, electronic communication and information retrieval, The meta-object distinction as manifested in information retrieval research and system development, Various forms and instruments of labor as related to the design and maintenance of information systems, Past and future developments in the evolution of a discipline.Together, they put a humanistic face on our often-unconscious notions of information technology

Warner makes some thought-provoking points and covers topics - information retrieval, copyright, and the distinction between meta-objects and meta-language - that many librarians will find valuable. * College & Research Libraries *
...a book well-worth reading. * JASIST (Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology) *
...the book is a strong, theoretical push, borrowing from a Marxist perspective, to draw a historical perspective on information technologies and their uses. The book's chapters, which actually act as stand alone essays, begin with a description of the perspective, lead into research from and with this perspective, and end with a discussion of the prominence this perspective could play in future developments....Warner's greatest contribution with this book is its attempt to rebuke the limited understanding of information technology in information science. * British Journal of Educational Technology *

Julian Warner is a faculty member in information studies at the Queen's University of Belfast and has been a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also the former chair of the Special Interest Group on the History and Foundations of Information Science.