America's Information Wars

The Untold Story of Information Systems in America’s Conflicts and Politics from World War II to the Internet Age

Colin B. Burke

This book narrates the development of science, sci/tech, and intelligence information systems and technologies in the United States from the beginning of World War II to the second decade of our century. The story ranges from a description of the information systems and machines of the 1940s created at Wild Bill Donovan’s predecessors of the Central Intelligence Agency, to the rise of a huge international science information industry, and to the 1990’s Open Access-Open Culture reformers’ reactions to the commercialization of science information. Necessarily, there is much about the people, cultures, and politics that shaped the methods, systems, machines and protests. The reason for that is simple: The histories of technologies and methods are human histories. Science information’s many lives were shaped by idiosyncrasies and chance, as well as by social, economic, political and technical ‘forces’.
The varied motives, personalities and beliefs of unique and extraordinary people fashioned science information’s past. The important players ranged from a gentleman scholar who led the Office of Strategic Services’ information work, to an ill-fated Hollywood movie director, to life-mavericks like the science information legend Eugene Garfield, to international financial wheeler-dealers such as Robert Maxwell, and to youthful ultra-liberal ideologically-driven Silicon Valley internet millionaires. However, although there are no determining laws of information history, social, political, legal and economic factors were important. After 1940, science information’s tools and policies, as well as America’s universities, were being molded by the nation’s wealth, its role in international affairs, the stand-off between left and right politics, and by the intensifying conflict between Soviet and Western interests.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 390 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-5381-1245-8 • Hardback • March 2018 • $104.00 • (£80.00)

978-1-5381-5176-1 • Paperback • February 2021 • $51.00 • (£39.00)

978-1-5381-1246-5 • eBook • March 2018 • $48.50 • (£37.00)

Subjects: History / United States / 20th Century, Language Arts & Disciplines / Library & Information Science / General, History / Cold War, History / Military / World War II

America's Information Wars

The Untold Story of Information Systems in America’s Conflicts and Politics from World War II to the Internet Age

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

This book narrates the development of science, sci/tech, and intelligence information systems and technologies in the United States from the beginning of World War II to the second decade of our century. The story ranges from a description of the information systems and machines of the 1940s created at Wild Bill Donovan’s predecessors of the Central Intelligence Agency, to the rise of a huge international science information industry, and to the 1990’s Open Access-Open Culture reformers’ reactions to the commercialization of science information. Necessarily, there is much about the people, cultures, and politics that shaped the methods, systems, machines and protests. The reason for that is simple: The histories of technologies and methods are human histories. Science information’s many lives were shaped by idiosyncrasies and chance, as well as by social, economic, political and technical ‘forces’.
The varied motives, personalities and beliefs of unique and extraordinary people fashioned science information’s past. The important players ranged from a gentleman scholar who led the Office of Strategic Services’ information work, to an ill-fated Hollywood movie director, to life-mavericks like the science information legend Eugene Garfield, to international financial wheeler-dealers such as Robert Maxwell, and to youthful ultra-liberal ideologically-driven Silicon Valley internet millionaires. However, although there are no determining laws of information history, social, political, legal and economic factors were important. After 1940, science information’s tools and policies, as well as America’s universities, were being molded by the nation’s wealth, its role in international affairs, the stand-off between left and right politics, and by the intensifying conflict between Soviet and Western interests.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 390 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-5381-1245-8 • Hardback • March 2018 • $104.00 • (£80.00)

978-1-5381-5176-1 • Paperback • February 2021 • $51.00 • (£39.00)

978-1-5381-1246-5 • eBook • March 2018 • $48.50 • (£37.00)

Subjects: History / United States / 20th Century, Language Arts & Disciplines / Library & Information Science / General, History / Cold War, History / Military / World War II

Author

Colin B. Burke is an historian who has researched and published on the history of higher education, quantitative methods in history, American political history, the history of computers, the history of information, the history of nonprofit organizations, and intelligence history.
Among his honors, he has been the Eugene Garfield Fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, a Research Fellow at the Yale PONPO Center, the Scholar in Residence at the National Security Agency, a Fellow of the Social Science Research Council, and the Fulbright Scholar in Warsaw during the year when Poland ousted the Communists.

Table of Contents

Part One: Information at War with Hitler and Tojo, Then with Stalin
Chapter 1 The OSS’ Unusual Librarians
Chapter 2 Forging an Intelligence System
Chapter 3 A New Information Culture
Chapter 4 Microfilm at the OSS, for War and Profit
Chapter 5 One System for All Intelligence
Chapter 6 CIA’s Classification and Automation Battles
Part Two: Cold War Information Politics and Lives
Chapter 7 Ideology and Science Information Policy
Chapter 8 The CIA’s Librarians Under Fire
Chapter 9 Library and Classification Revolutions? SAL, Semantic Factors, the Luhn Scanner
Chapter 10 Automation Dreams, Minicard
Chapter 11 The CIA vs. the Librarians
Chapter 12 From Microfilm to Computers
Chapter 13 Automatic Translation’s Woes
Chapter 14 A Cold War Information Career
Part Three: Information’s Troubled Golden Age to the Era of Open Access
Chapter 15 Sputnik’s New Politics of Information
Chapter 16 An American Information Century?
Chapter 17 The Plural Information System Survives, With Difficulty
Chapter 18 A New Information Era: The American Information Century’s Challengers
Chapter 19 Another Serials Crisis, Open Access, the Return of Ideology

Reviews

Burke is one of our most accomplished interpreters of the history of information and of the technological apparatuses that our best minds envisioned could manage its growth and access. America's Information Wars is well researched and crafted with the sure hand of a master historian. Anyone who wants to understand how America coped with the information explosion of the latter half of the twentieth century will be well served by Burke's latest book.
— Journal of American History

A story untold until now. Before the age of Google and Wikipedia, finding the right piece of information was no simple matter. The process was especially crucial for the Allies during the Second World War. This thoroughly researched book traces the fascinating but tortuous process of gathering and indexing information, from its World War II roots to civilian applications, up to the computer age.
— Paul E. Ceruzzi, curator, Aerospace Computing and Electronics, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution

At last, a well-researched account of key information retrieval developments following World War II. In America’s Information Wars, names mentioned in the technical literature become human beings, innovations are set in social contexts, some exaggerated claims exposed, and a framework provided for us to build on.
— Michael K. Buckland, emeritus professor, School of Information, University of California, Berkeley

There is no one better positioned to untangle the labyrinth of the early intersection of science and intelligence information than Colin Burke. His fascinating account reveals so many of the characters that participated in this arcane discipline. He pulls at the threads of the tangled web to tease out the characters and their participation in bringing together science, information, and intelligence.
— Thomas R. Johnson, author of American Cryptology During the Cold War,1945–1989

The role of library and information science in the creation of modern computing is not a well-known story. The role of the intelligence community in creating technologies and information services that stood at the forefront of information science is even less well known. This book, based in solid archival research, remedies these gaps in our understanding. People interested in modern computer and information science will find this an engaging story that broadens their understanding of how these important fields in the modern world came about.
— William Aspray, professor, Information Science, University of Colorado Boulder

Too often, looking back, we see the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of historical achievement. Colin Burke’s unique contribution to our understanding of information science and computer science provides details that enable us to see dead ends as well as successes.
— Jonathan Grudin, principal researcher, Microsoft and affiliate professor, University of Washington