The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information
- ISBN-10
- 145296372X
- ISBN-13
- 9781452963723
- Category
- Social Science
- Pages
- 280
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2021-05-25
- Publisher
- U of Minnesota Press
- Author
- Craig Robertson
Description
The history of how a deceptively ordinary piece of office furniture transformed our relationship with information The ubiquity of the filing cabinet in the twentieth-century office space, along with its noticeable absence of style, has obscured its transformative role in the histories of both information technology and work. In the first in-depth history of this neglected artifact, Craig Robertson explores how the filing cabinet profoundly shaped the way that information and data have been sorted, stored, retrieved, and used. Invented in the 1890s, the filing cabinet was a result of the nineteenth-century faith in efficiency. Previously, paper records were arranged haphazardly: bound into books, stacked in piles, curled into slots, or impaled on spindles. The filing cabinet organized loose papers in tabbed folders that could be sorted alphanumerically, radically changing how people accessed, circulated, and structured information. Robertson’s unconventional history of the origins of the information age posits the filing cabinet as an information storage container, an “automatic memory” machine that contributed to a new type of information labor privileging manual dexterity over mental deliberation. Gendered assumptions about women’s nimble fingers helped to naturalize the changes that brought women into the workforce as low-level clerical workers. The filing cabinet emerges from this unexpected account as a sophisticated piece of information technology and a site of gendered labor that with its folders, files, and tabs continues to shape how we interact with information and data in today’s digital world.
Get the book
Similar books
-
The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information
By Craig Robertson"Craig Robertson explores how the filing cabinet profoundly shaped the way that information and data have been sorted, stored, retrieved, and used.
-
The Cabinet
By Un-su KimWinner of the Munhakdongne Novel Award, South Korea's most prestigious literary prize.
-
Sitting on a File Cabinet, Naked, with a Gun: True Stories of Silicon Valley CEO Assistants
By Linda McFarland, Joanne LindenSitting on a File Cabinet, Naked, With a Gun offers an engaging, entertaining insider's look into the offices of some of the most powerful men and women in Silicon Valley, as executive assistants spill the beans about their CEOs.
-
The Paper Solution: What to Shred, What to Save, and How to Stop It From Taking Over Your Life
By Lisa WoodruffAnd how do we organize and manage the 15 percent that remains? With The Paper Solution, founder of Organize365 Lisa Woodruff delivers a proven, step-by-step guide for what to shred, what to save, and how to sort what's left behind.
-
A Coaching Journey - 'it's in the File Cabinet
By Dick LienAs a result this coaching book, chronicles information from many coaches and levels of play to help coaches, coach better. This book addresses: 1. Pre and post games speeches. 2. Coaches banquet "Ice breakers." 3.
-
Living Well, Spending Less: 12 Secrets of the Good Life
By Ruth SoukupWho Needs This Book? Living Well, Spending Less was written to bring hope and encouragement to every woman who currently feels overwhelmed or stressed with a life--and budget--that feels out of control.
-
Love Is a Filing Cabinet
By Jeanne KernAmbitious organizer Minn Evans resents being the only sane and stable person in her family.
-
Files: Law and Media Technology
By Cornelia VismannQuod non est in actis, non est in mundo. (What is not on file is not in the world.) Once files are reduced to the status of stylized icons on...
-
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing
By Judy BlumeLiving with his little brother, Fudge, makes Peter Hatcher feel like a fourth grade nothing.
-
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character
By Richard P. FeynmanIn his stories, Feynman’s life shines through in all its eccentric glory—a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and raging chutzpah. Included for this edition is a new introduction by Bill Gates.