The Word and the Sword: How Techniques of Information and Violence

by Leonard Dudley

Dudley attempts to impose a pattern on the entire history of human civilization. He shows how the major transformations in the character of social life have been determined by eight significant innovations: four new ways of dealing with information - writing, printing, mass media and integrated circuits; and four new ways of organizing the applications of violence - metal weapons, artillery, steam transport and heavy cavalry. Military and informational technologies are so crucial because they are instrumental in holding states together, while innovation in itself tends to produce new economies of scale.

Hardcover

First published April 8, 1992

Reviews

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is about six things that altered history: writing, printing, integrated circuits, and some military shit I don't remember. Finished over a really, just goddamn delicious bowl of chicken noodle soup (Campbell's), I can't get over how exhilarating that bowl of soup was. Soup! Yummy soup! Soooouuuuuuuuup. A surprising paucity of soup in the book itself, though, rest assured, Martin Luther was known as "Soupy" by his fellow Wittenbergians. He drowned in soup.