Article Review: Beniger

This week I read an excerpt from the book The Control Revolution, by James R. Beniger. This section focuses on how The Control Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution played a vital role in forming The Information society. Beniger starts from the very beginning by defining what he believes to be the most important control technology of the late nineteenth century, Bureaucracy. Beniger cites Max Weber who saw it as a huge force in the Industrial Revolution.  This sets the groundwork for the article as Beniger continues to refer back to these events in time.  What Beniger does next is he defines the words “Control” and “Revolution.” These words are commonly used for different meanings than what he is getting at, so Beniger wants to explicitly state his thesis on what is the Control Revolution. What he lands upon is that “Control” means an influence to a predetermined goal, and that “Revolution” in this sense is a rapid innovative transformation to regain functions the society once had. Beniger then goes on to define more terms he feels eased the transition to the information society. He goes on further about Bureaucracy and describes how it actually came about. He then brings “Rationalization” into play.

Beniger continues to slowly transition to The Information Society, and bring up what he calls “New Control Technology.” Throughout the article he had been mentioning different control technologies, and the ones in the earlier time periods all had to do with restricting or easing the flow of information. Now that the article has reached the late 19^th century the control technologies are more mechanical like the telegraph or railroad. This allowed information to travel significantly further and faster.

Beniger finally reaches the 20^th century in this article and he brings up a study from Fritz Machlup who pinpoints exactly when society transformed into the information society. Machlup broke the labor force into four categories, one being information. It can be seen how from 1800 to 1980 Information labor slowly, yet significantly grows. By the mid 20^th century it is the largest sector in the work force.

Beniger was born in Wisconsin in 1947, and sadly passed in 2010. He graduated from Harvard University as magna cum laude. This article along with the full book was later published by The Harvard University Press in 1989. This means that this article was published well before many modern technologies we know, like the Internet, but still seems accurate. This speaks to the overall knowledge Beniger has on the topic. The fact that Beniger graduated with such a prestigious honor at such a prestigious university also helps prove that he was fully qualified to write this article. Furthermore the fact that Harvard published this paper and put their name on it solidifies the legitimacy of it. I am not the only one that thinks this way the Critical Review stated, “This book is designed to be the synthetic work on the ‘Information Society’ and its origins, and by all rights it will be. It is beautifully done and is built to last… Everything about the book is intelligent.” This article provides a very detailed and accurate history of The Information Society through the eyes of The Control Revolution.

James Beniger