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The Study of Information: Interdisciplinary Messages
by Fritz Machlup and Una Mansfield (eds.). Published by Wiley-Interscience, 743 pp, 1983.
This is not so much a review of a book as one of that desirable volume which I would like to accompany me on my desert island alongside the bible and Shakespeare. Indeed, the book was published in 1983. Fritz Machlup was a Viennese intellectual and economist who in 1962, through a book called The production and distribution of knowledge in the United States, was one of the first to realize the economic power of knowledge and information. He was a distinguished professor of economics and international finance at Princeton before retiring in 1971. He died of a heart attack only a few weeks before this particular book was published. It is through his . enthusiasm that 39 information scientists got together to write a total of 56 essays on various aspects of information. My own thoughts have often wandered 58 JIT, 1, 2 -June 1986 in several directions which the word information elicits. Not only are there all the engineering connotations, but also the economic and social effects which are a constant source of fascination. I therefore feel no qualms about introducing this book to the readers of JIT even though its publication date is 1983. It concentrates the mind on every interesting idea and every fascinating nuance that the word information can generate. The first part of the book traces the history of information viewed from the perspective of cognitive science -- that is, the formal science of the modelling of human cognition. This has interesting contributions by Alan Newell and Michael Arbib. The second part of the book provides an interesting contrast to the first as it looks at information from the point of view of computer science or informatics. The key question raised is whether computer science has a well-defined ideology, methodology and sociology. This reveals some interesting cleavages between people of whom all are concerned with machines while some feel that such artefacts are means to important ends, and others see them as ends in themselves. Alan Newell hosts the third section on Artificial Intelligence (AI). His perspective on the importance of history is reassuring: 'With a passion bordering on compulsion,...