Shaping Information History as an Intellectual Discipline

Abstract

Information is an emerging field of interest and concern to citizens, public officials, and scholars in many disciplines. This article acknowledges that problems exist in defining the subject of information history and argues the case that the topic can be addressed in a more coherent fashion. It then poses five questions for historians to investigate with respect to this field and proposes a sequence of three strategies and an agenda for what scholars can do to make this topic a new field of inquiry called “information history,” drawing upon the historiographical experiences of other areas of historical inquiry.