Description
Taylor & Francis Information Beyond Borders International Cultural and Intellectual Exchange in the Belle Epoque 2014 Edition by W. Boyd Rayward
The period in Europe known as the Belle Epoque was a time of vibrant and unsettling modernization in social and political organization, in artistic and literary life, and in the conduct and discoveries of the sciences. These trends, and the emphasis on internationalization that characterized them, necessitated the development of new structures and processes for discovering, disseminating, manipulating and managing access to information. This book analyses the dynamics of the emerging networks of individuals, organizations, technologies and publications by which means information was exchanged across and through all kinds of borders and boundaries in this period. It extends the frame within which historical discourse about information can take place by bringing together scholars not only from different disciplines but also from different national and linguistic backgrounds. As a result the volume offers new and surprising ways of looking at the historical period of the Belle Epoque. It will be of interest to scholars and students of information history and the emergence of the information society as well as to social and cultural historians concerned with the late 19th and early 20th century. Table of contents :- Contents: Introduction: international exhibitions, Paul Otlet, Henri La Fontaine and the paradox of the belle epoque, W. Boyd Rayward; Of artifacts and organs: world telegraph cables and Ernst Kapp's philosophy of technology, Frank Hartmann; The formation of global news agencies, 1859-1914, Volker Barth; 'In the pursuit of colonial intelligence': the archive and identity in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century, Heather Gaunt; Divided space - divided science? Closing and transcending scientific boundaries in Central Europe between 1860 and 1900, Jan Surman; Scholarly networks and international congresses: the Orientalists before the First World War, Paul Servais; Organizing a global idiom: Esperanto, Ido and the World Auxiliary Language Movement before the First World War, Markus Krajewski; Beyond Babel: Esperanto, Ido and Louis Couturat's pursuit of an international scientific language, Fabian de Kloe; Laboratories of social thought: the transnational advocacy network of the Institut International pour la Diffusion des Experiences Sociales and its Documents du Progres (1907-1916), Christophe Verbruggen and Julie Carlier; Sociology in Brussels, organicism and the idea of a world society in the period before the First World War, Wouter Van Acker; Collecting paper: Die Brucke, the bourgeois interior, and the architecture of knowledge, Nader Vossoughian; Alfred H. Fried and the challenges for 'scientific pacifism' in the belle epoque, Daniel Laqua; Global government through science: Pieter Eijkman's plans for a world capital, Geert J. Somsen; Dynamics of networks and of decimal classification systems, 1905-35, Charles van den Heuvel; The great classification battle of 1910: a tale of 'blunders and bizzareries' at the Melbourne public library, Mary Carroll and Sue Reynolds; From display to data: the commercial museum and the beginnings of business information, 1870-1914, Dave Muddiman; An information management tool for dismantling barriers in early multinational corporations: the staff magazine in Britain before World War I, Alistair Black; Index.