History of information

This article treats history of information . Information is a message transmitted by various means, or media, of a source towards a recipient. Physics clarifies the tendency of this information to be degraded with each new transmission, i.e. to lose of its kind to approach a random structure (Entropie). See on this point the article devoted to with Claude Shannon. Journalists and philosophers rather thématisent the question of the value of information, in particular, but not only, its Vérité.

Rumor with the press

According to the Comments of Jules César, the Gaulois were fond of delicacies rumors, often with their costs. To the 15th century, Christian Delporte recalls, opened out the “ Gazetin s ”, handwritten sheets written starting from anecdotes glanées in the corridors of the powerful ones. At the 17th century, with Paris offices of information were constituted which organized the collection of the Potin S. the people, consumed to him the Rumeur in an oral form, which gave sometimes place to public representations, with great reinforcement of Pantomime S, laments, projection treatments using the magic lantern. The Réforme saw multiplying the Libelle S and the wall cupboards, ancestors of the press of opinion. This journalism “ before the lettre ”, as Michel Mathien characterizes it, will continue to thrive after the appearance of the press itself as long as the latter will remain under the control of the capacity.

The press was born from the alliance of public curiosity, the will of powerful and the Imprimerie. May 30th, 1631, is nearly two centuries after Gutenberg, Théophraste Renaudot (1586-1653), protected by Richelieu, founds the Gazette , a periodic booklet. It was about a kind of semi-official bulletin of the Monarchie. The King and Richelieu wrote themselves certain articles, and Renaudot rewrote them in its so particular style. Since 1644, in England, John Milton published a speech against the Censure. On its side, Renaudot theorized the function of the press. After eliminatehaving initially eliminated its single competitor, Renaudot however does not succeed, in spite of the lawsuits which it gained, to preserve its Monopole. After the death of its founder, the style of the Gazette changed whole with the whole, becoming a model of classicism. At the time of the business of the Stupid of Gévaudan, the fact various made its appearance there.

After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), the newspapers written by the refugees Huguenot S in Holland flooded France, being caught some vigorously with the royal capacity and the Gazette . While England replaced the censure by measurements of economic smothering, France knew as of the middle of the 18th century some Libéralisme, which supported the birth of very many titles, in particular of the readily polemical literary journals, in opposition to the narrative style of the gazettes, notes Delporte. This press was thus ready to play all its part at the time of the French revolution, before the crushing argument of the 18 Fructidor year V (September 4th, 1797).

The construction of a profession

Until the law of July 29th, 1881, and still at the time of the Great War, the capacities will seek in a chronic way to muzzle the press (18 laws or ordinances on the press of 1815 to 1848!). The difficult combat for freedom will still reinforce the bond of journalism and the political world. At that time, the distinction is not either clear between the journalists and the men of letters, so that the journalist passes readily for a missed writer. In fact, journalism is regarded as a stage, the anteroom of the literature or capacity, from where the formula (allotted wrongly to Alphonse Karr): “ journalism leads to all, in condition of in sortir ”. However, the press evolves/moves on the economic plan and professionnalise. The journalists are more and more frequently employees. The practice of the sale to the number, the fall of the costs and progress of the Instruction make possible the constitution of an assistantship popular.

The news agencies share the geographical areas since 1859. Their collaborators will be the first to really make career in journalism, according to Michel Mathien. The end of the 19th century still amplifies the changes started under the Second Empire. Pullings of the Quotidien S reveal this Industrialization. They pass to Paris of 180 000 specimens in 1848 to the million in 1870 and five times more in 1910, province of 250 000 in 1868 to four million in 1914. The newspaper tends to being regarded by its owner as a simple capitalist company , which also offers the possibility of a pressure on the political power or the savers (Scandale of Panamá, Russian loans). The teams pack themselves and are treated on a hierarchical basis, while the journalists professionnalisent themselves and specialize. The professional solidarity is organized slowly, on a supporter of corporatism mode which slices with the former practices, like that of the duel. The American tradition of the report is essential in Europe, so that nowadays still, one often compares the journalist to the Reporter, large or small, hero or anti-hero. Competition between draftings takes the form of the race to the Scoop. The newspapers of opinion do not disappear however. The Affaire Dreyfus sees the majority of the popular titles conducting a campaign of opinion antidreyfusarde, with tonality Antisémite.

During the inter-war period, the newspapers are mingled with many Scandale S. the journalists, whose material situation was degraded, start to oppose their conscientiousness to the interests of the Actionnaire S, but are also caught some to the dilettantes, to teachers or to writers. Some dream of a council of the order comparable with that of the Médecin S or lawyer S. Of the conflicts burst for the first time between the journalists and the press barons. After the Release, the newspapers resulting from the Résistance, which intend to break with the supervision of the money and to set up an ethical professional, are swept by a competition ready to answer waitings of the public. The Trade unionism, him, tears.

Audio-visual journalism

It is finished by it golden age of the Written press. Since 1923, Radiola diffuses the first radio news. The journalists of the written press test many difficulties of competing with these new media, suitable to present information instantaneously. However, the professional statute of 1935, which recognizes the clause of conscience, “ oublie ” journalists of radio. With the Television, the “ starts; setting in spectacle of the world, including the setting in spectacle of the media them-mêmes ” (Mathien). The phenomenon accelerates in the years 1980, with the development of the concerned of the Audimat and fond of delicacies private channels of Instantanéité, with depends, sometimes, of the deontology and the critical spirit. To appear, the social actors must themselves of “ communiquer ” in order to answer waitings of the media, and through them, the their public ones. The draftings often treat the same images, which constitute their raw material. Competition would even lead, according to Pierre Bourdieu, with a paradoxical homogenization, each one being determined compared to what the others do, as one saw at the time of the painful business of small Grégory. The border enters journalism and animation, reality and the fiction, the public life and the private life, grow blurred. Information tends to merge with the entertainment (Information-tainment, of the English word Entertainment ). Certain lightnesies and trickeries (“ révolution ” Rumanian, reports created of all parts) lead to a crisis of confidence of the public, in particular with regard to television. In certain countries, like Italy, of the policies build their career thanks to financial control on the principal media. In any case, there is far, in multi-media logic, of the myth of international reporter to the reality of the contemporary journalist, who most of the time is satisfied to format information and images that it did not collect itself. Indeed, television channels and magazines resort at image data bases and news agencies, to concentrate on their true trade: presentation of information. This “ externalisation ” of the collection of information must much with Internet.

The role of the data-processing networks

Internet is a total network which allows the connection of any personal Ordinateur with any other. But it is also an inexhaustible source of images and of Programme S. It symbolizes the instantaneity and the ubiquity of flows of information, capital, images. But it is also used with fine terrorists or revisionists (in particular Néo-Nazi be and anti-semites). The authoritarian regimes, following the example China and Burma, have on their side developed of the effective means to muzzle it.

Especially, Internet recreates the conditions of the Rumeur, because it allows the diffusion of information without necessarily worrying about their relevance or their source. The writers, in spite of their good will, are not either inevitably professional journalists. Thus, the most elaborate system that data processing produced combines with most antiquated of the modes of information!

However, the bringing together of the public to information also makes it possible to sharpen the critical spirit and to imply the public in the presentation and the collection of information, which are not then any more the prerogative of the traditional mediums and their quite advised specialists. This revolution of the medium thus allows to the public of réapproprier information and to free from intermediaries often well too conformists. One could see in Internet a democratic remedy for the control which would exert on the traditional mediums the financial capacities and publitaires.

Internet thus makes debate: libertarian and levelling panacea for the partisans of the cyber- Utopia, means of expression of a Anglo-Saxon sales strategy for some disillusioned, or like a simple, handy and accessible medium for those which make use of it with caution. Perhaps Internet will have it for fate that of these radios “ libres ” become private stations, or that, more annoying, of the daily newspaper the Humanity . While waiting, Internet contributes to reinforce the idea according to which information is free, which undoubtedly destabilizes (as well as the development of the free press) the assistantship of the majority of the French daily newspapers.

Logical automats and ideal machines

Pascal (1623-1662) is the inventor of a machine to carry out additions and subtractions, but it is with Leibniz (1646-1716) that returns, if not the realization, at least the idea of a machine able to reason, i.e. to connect elementary proposals mechanically. This project inseparable from is discovered possibility, ignored by Descartes, to bring back the reasoning to blind calculations, bearing on simple symbols while respecting the formal criteria of the truth.

In France, at the end of the Revolution, Rich Gaspard Marie of Prony to the idea to divide mathematical work on the model of the Manufacture. This idea will inspire the economist Charles Babbage: in 1834, anxious to automate certain intellectual tasks, he imagines a machine able not only of calculations Arithmétique S, but also to handle algebraical expressions. Babbage will not be able however to produce its machine, which could perfectly have functioned. In 1847, George Boole manages to carry out the leibnizien project algebrisation of logic. It is always this mathematical tool which is used today to design the electronic circuits of our modern machines, notices Jean Gabriel Ganascia. William Stanley Jevons applies in 1870 the Boolean algebra to the manufacture of a logical Piano, inspired of the analytical machine of Babbage.

At the beginning of the 20th century, mathematicians as David Hilbert (1862-1943) propose a formal model of the mathematical, suitable reasoning for automatic applications. But it is the British Alan Turing who, in 1936, theorizes the artificial intelligence. As Carnot had done it for the machines Thermodynamique S, Turing designs a very simple ideal machine, which is the theoretical equivalent of all the concrete machines with logical calculation. Turing is used for to describe its machine of the same systems symbolic systems as those which make it possible to formalize mathematics. During the Second world war, Turing carries out one of the first electronic computer electronic computers.

The development of data processing

The Machine of Turing was satisfied to traverse all the possibilities of a given problem, without own strategy. In 1956, the pioneers of data processing associate with the programs methods Heuristique S, which consist in directing the machine in privileged directions. It is in the middle of years 1970 that the Informatique is spread in the industrial world. The Micro-ordinateur S make their appearance then, but data processing will make its entry in the hearths only in the middle of the years 1980, with the adoption of the Video game by the children and the teenagers. Apple, with its Macintosh, starts to popularize the personal computers since 1984. In the middle of the years 1990, the Micro-informatique knows a true explosion with the irruption of Internet in the concerns of the industrialists and the policies, then in the daily life. However, explains Vinton Cerf, one of the fathers of the network, “ Internet, which appeared to emerge from nowhere, was under development since thirty ans ”. Like spaces it interplanetary, the cyberspace was initially explored by the soldiers and the scientists, then became an instrument of the reconquest of the market of consumer electronics. The highways of information will be a headlight project of the administration Clinton, at the same time to start again the economy (inside) and to support the Libéralisme (outside).

Of ARPANet with Internet

In 1962, in full cold war, Paul Baran realizes, at the request of the American air force, a study on the military communication systems. It develops the principle of a very decentralized mesh network, able to function even in the event of partial destruction, or of problems of saturation, because of existence of several possible ways between two “ nœuds ” of the network.

In 1969, the the University of California in Los Angeles implements, for the Pentagone, the embryo of the network of the agency for the research projects advanced (ARPANet), to which other scientific and university institutions add soon additional nodes. Since 1972, is conceived the project of an international architecture, Internet, consisted of a whole of inter-connected autonomous networks, which will become reality only at the end of the years 1980 (France connects itself in 1988).

In 1979 the first case of censure occurs on a data-processing network, because of the creation of newsgroups on the Sexe and the Drogue S. In 1981, France Telecom lance the Minitel, which will have with its apogee 20 million users for 6,5 million terminals!

In 1983, ARPANet is divided Milnet, attached to Defense. ARPANet (relayed in 1990 by the network of the the National Science Foundation ) as for him is intended to the researchers and to the academics, as the Acceptable Use Policy will stipulate it.

In 1990, the European laboratory of CERN invents and develops the World Wide Web, whose simplicity contributes to the explosion of Internet. The wave of marketing starts since 1991, with the creation of the Commercial Internet Exchange , but they is 1995 which will be, according to Arnaud Dufour, the pivotal year. NSFnet then ceases existing: no overall authority caps to more Internet, community of thousands of networks, pertaining to various governments, private companies, or universities. Since, the number of connected companies grows constantly, from where the appearance of a certain feeling of being dispossessed among the pioneers of the network.

The delinquency on Internet is however older than this commercial invasion. Historically, the first sites attacked by the Hacker S were those of the official and military institutions. Internet seems to have been favourable, from its decentralized character, but also by hostility with all Big Brother electronic, with the investment of feelings anarchizing.

Currently, in 2006, other forms of Cybercriminalité develop, driven by the lure of gain (diversion of the payments by Bank card, skirting of the royalty , interception of significant data, Blanchiment of funds). Let us mention also the networks paedophiles or Néo-Nazi S. In answer, the States blame, failing to mitigate their deficiencies, the deregulation. Some try nevertheless to build a restrictive framework, with the national scales or regional (Europe and Asia, inter alia), or, with pragmatism, to adapt their tools for fight against criminality. The motivations are sometimes those, traditional, of the authoritarian regimes, but also those of the tax authorities.

Internet, presented like a world network, actually remains largely dominated by the operators American S and liberal logic.

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