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ENG: The internet and digital technologies have generated a flood of texts and widespread worries about information overload. But this phenomenon is not unique to our age. Already centuries ago scholars complained about an overabundance of books, especially in the wake of the invention of printing in mid-15th century Europe. Blair studies the remedies that the learned devised to cope with that explosion of texts, notably by making summaries and excerpts which could be sorted and accessed in reference books. First she traces methods of information management back to antiquity and the middle ages and across cultures with long textual traditions such the Islamic and Chinese worlds. Then she focuses on the tools and practices in use in early modern Europe, such as note-taking, alphabetical indexing, thematic diagramming, and large scale compiling. The result combines intellectual history with book history to emphasize long continuities between past and present.
RUS: Интернет и цифровые технологии порождают необозримый поток текстов, что вызывает особенного типа тревожность - по поводу информационной перегрузки. Но это явление не является уникальным для нашей эпохи. Уже столетия назад ? и особенно после изобретения книгопечатания в Европе в середине XV века ? ученые жаловались
About the author
ENG:
Ann Blair is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor in the Department of History at Harvard University. She specializes in early modern European cultural history and book history. She studies methods of learned work in the Renaissance, including note-taking and collaborations with printers and amanuenses. Most recently she co-edited a reference book Information:
A Historical Companion (2021).
RUS:
Энн Блэр -- профессор имени Карла Х. Пфорцхаймера, она преподает на историческом факультете Гарвардского университета, специализируется на истории европейской культуры раннего нового времени и истории книги. Соредактор справочника Information:
A Historical Companion (2021).
