Structuring the Information Age provides insight into the largely
unexplored evolution of information processing in the commercial sector
and the underrated influence of corporate users in shaping the history
of modern technology.
JoAnne Yates examines how life insurance firms--where good
record-keeping and repeated use of massive amounts of data were
crucial--adopted and shaped information processing technology through
most of the twentieth century. The book analyzes this process beginning
with tabulating technology, the most immediate predecessor of the
computer, and continuing through the 1970s with early computers. Yates
elaborates two major themes: the reciprocal influence of information
technology and its use, and the influence of past practices on the
adoption and use of new technologies. In the 1950s, insurance industry
leaders recognized that computers would enable them to integrate
processes previously handled separately, but they also understood that
they would have to change their ways of working profoundly to achieve
this integration. When it came to choosing equipment and applications,
most companies ultimately preferred a gradual, incremental migration to
an immediate and radical transformation.
In tracing this process, Yates shows that IBM's successful transition
from tabulators to computers in part reflected that vendor's ability to
provide large customers such as insurance companies with the necessary
products to allow gradual change. In addition, this detailed industry
case study helps explain information technology's so-called productivity
paradox, showing that firms took roughly two decades to achieve the
initial computerization and process integration that the industry set as
objectives in the 1950s.
