by Angela Guess
Wolfram has created a timeline chronicling the history of data throughout the centuries and across various cultures. The article states, “The story the timeline tells is a fascinating one: of how, in a multitude of steps, our civilization has systematized more and more areas of knowledge—collected the data associated with them, and gradually made them amenable to automation. The usual telling of history makes scant mention of most of these developments—though so many of them are so obvious in our lives today. Weights and measures. The calendar. Alphabetical lists. Plots of data. Dictionaries. Maps. Music notation. Stock charts. Timetables. Public records. ZIP codes. Weather reports. All the things that help us describe and organize our world.”
It continues, “Historically, each one required an idea, and had an origin. Most often, what was happening was that some aspect of the world was effectively getting bigger—and one organization or one person took the lead in introducing a method of systematization. Sometimes those involved were powerful or famous. But quite often they were in a sense in a back room, just solving a practical problem—usually modestly at first. Yet in time the perhaps arbitrary schemes they invented gradually spread as the need for them increased.”
photo credit: Wolfram
