Information and Secrecy : Vannevar Bush, Ultra, and the Other Memex - Hardcover

Colin Burke

9780810827837: Information and Secrecy : Vannevar Bush, Ultra, and the Other Memex

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810827832 ISBN 13: 9780810827837

Publisher: Scarecrow Press, 1994

Written for the general reader, Burke's volume provides the first view of the relationships among America's librarians, cryptanalysts and educators as they created information science, computerized codebreaking, and the modern research university. Using hundreds of primary and secret documents and more than twenty illustrations to trace the careers of Vannevar Bush of MIT and the navy's codebreaking agency, OP-20-G, Burke shows how the lack of coherent American science and intelligence policies led to the tangled lives of two proto-computers that were the world's first electronic data-processing machines. The histories of Bush's Memex-like microfilm Rapid Selector for the American Documentalists and his Comparator for those who created the nation's Ultra Bombe and RAM machines began in the early 1930s and suffered through a generation of struggles with intransigent technologies, policy conflicts with the British over the control of signals-intelligence and the unwillingness of America to develop information and intelligence technologies until the Cold War turned to science and the library to fulfill defense needs.

Now, as the United States is on the verge of investing billions of dollars in information highways while reducing its intelligence capabilities, the tragedy of Bush's machines warns against information scientists putting technology ahead of logic and of the dangers of the nation returning to isolationism. Indexed and with extensive endnotes which serve the bibliographic function.

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About the Author:

Colin Burke (Ph.D., Washington University) is an historian and educator who has written on American social history, the history of higher education, quantitative methods and the history of computers. He has received awards from, among others, the SSRC and the Spencer Foundation. He was the senior Fulbright scholar in Poland during the fall of Communism and has acted as a consultant to government agencies.

Review:

This readable and fascinating history should be in information science and computer science collections. (Choice)

Burke tells an enthralling tale of policy clashes and intrigue, of financial deals and inter-agency skullduggery...this is great reading for anybody willing to pursue a fascinating byway of our professional history. (Alr)

This is an important book, which should be of interest to readers across a wide spectrum of interests. It is clearly written, and all of it is intelligible to non-technologists. (Journal Of Documentation)

This highly original work contains previously unpublished information on many subjects, particularly American World War II Rapid Analytical Machines (RAM) for cryptanalytic purposes. (Cryptologia)

...considerable detail...an extremely relevant study that deals with significant ethical and social aspects of how information technology can best be developed. (Journal Of Information Ethics)

This book is well worth reading. (The Library Quarterly)

...a thoughtful job of recording, interpreting, and putting into perspective the work of a number of individuals. (Wilson Library Bulletin)

This innovative work has a lot of fascinating new information and its 73 pages of densely packed notes attest to the intensive research demanded. (The Cryptogram)

...a thoroughly researched, well-written and otherwise fascinating account of an information technology.... (Journal Of Academic Librarianship)

...there is no doubt it has uncovered much new material...an interesting book, a labour of love. (Journal Of Information And Library Research)

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