CIAO DATE: 05/2012
April 2010
Humans have always wanted information, but technological limitations have always made information difficult and costly to create, transmit, and retain. The consequences of those limitations are among the factors driving the formation of large administrative entities, primary among them states. Addressing and redressing the information shortage that physical reality mandated gave states the opportunity to control and channel information, in all manner of ways. Scarcity also gave information enormous power. Hand-copied books were once so valuable that they were chained to the stands on which they were placed. Even later, when the Gutenberg press and subsequent inventions made production ever easier, states continued to invest great significance in information. Official information was promulgated by official or officially sanctioned means, in officially-approved forms—one reason why the US State Department still has an official font (actually, State has two official fonts)—while competing information was relegated to niche or marginal distribution, or indeed was banned entirely, as in the USSR, where those who disagreed with official information were forced, almost as in the pre-Gutenberg era, to produce and distribute their information by hand.
Resource link: Institutions and Information: The Challenge of the Six Vs [PDF] - 477K