Of sorcerers and thought leaders

Marketing the information revolution in the 1960s

Bibliographic Data

ID12919792
AuthorsAlex Sayf Cummings (Georgia State University, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume9
Issue1
Pages1-25
Publication date2016-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Sixties (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1754-1336 • E-ISSN: 1754-1328
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17541328.2015.1114746
OpenAlexW2339187448
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited31

Hoopla about the emergence of an information economy was widespread by the 1990s, when academics, politicians and the press celebrated the social transformations brought about by computers. Yet the rhetoric of high-tech revolution long predates Windows 95 or even the World Wide Web. Building on the work of Howard Brick and others on postwar debates over technology and the economy, this article explores how the trope of the “information revolution” entered public discourse in the United States in the 1960s. It considers how the general idea of a post-industrial society – an economy in which manufacturing might play a diminished role – became specifically tied in the public imagination to information technology and intellectual property. Technology firms waged a concerted campaign to assuage anxieties about technological unemployment while extolling the importance of computing and other new technologies to the nation’s economic future. It illustrates how advertisers developed a public relations message for firms such as RCA and IBM, aiming to reassure the public about the potential of computers and automation to transform society for the better. This promotion of the information revolution actually predated the influential discussions of a post-industrial society by theorists such as Daniel Bell and Alain Touraine in the early 1970s. The essay also highlights how prominent public intellectuals, such as Margaret Mead and Herman Kahn, and government officials lent their credibility to claims about the value of a future economy based on creating and processing information during the 1960s

Government (linguistics · Industrial Revolution · Information revolution · Media studies · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Promotion (chess · Rhetoric · Sociology · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law