Structuring the Information Age: Life Insurance and Technology in the Twentieth Century Hardcover - 2005

Structuring the Information Age provides insight into the evolution of information processing in the commercial sector and the 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.

Brilliant volume . . . Yates's study of the adaptation of information-processing resources in insurance has greatly widened the horizons of our understanding of the dynamics of technological development in a business setting.--Business History Review

This timely and important work is the first scholarly history devoted to the use of information technology within a single American industry.--EH.Net

A welcome addition to a growing body of literature on the history of the use of computers by businesses and a good model for other scholars to use.--American Historical Review

Structuring the Information Age examines the history of information technology in the United States by shifting focus away from the producers of that technology and toward a kind of end user that has heretofore received little attention--large-scale corporations, which easily rank among the leading information-technology (IT) consumers.--Journal of Interdisciplinary History

This valuable addition to the historiography of the computer looks at new technologies from a user's viewpoint. Here the user is the life insurance business, which is an appropriate choice because it has always been an information-intense business.--IEEE History Center Newsletter

Yates has contributed another original study to the history of information technology.--Technology and Culture

JoAnne Yates, Deputy Dean and Distinguished Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, is the author of Control through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management, also published by Johns Hopkins.