{"product_id":"the-filing-cabinet-a-vertical-history-of-information-9781517909468","title":"The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe history of how a deceptively ordinary piece of office furniture transformed our relationship with information\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e 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.\u003cp\u003eInvented 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRobertson'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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=AUTH-2767775\"\u003eCraig Robertson\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Minnesota Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 05\/25\/2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 280\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.10lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 5.90w x 0.90d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781517909468\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1517909465\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBISAC Categories:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e- \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=CAT-BUS\"\u003eBusiness \u0026amp; Economics\u003c\/a\u003e | \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=BISAC-BUS077000\"\u003eCorporate \u0026amp; Business History | General\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e- \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=CAT-SOC\"\u003eSocial Science\u003c\/a\u003e | \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=BISAC-SOC052000\"\u003eMedia Studies\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e- \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=CAT-LAN\"\u003eLanguage Arts \u0026amp; Disciplines\u003c\/a\u003e | \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=BISAC-LAN025000\"\u003eLibrary \u0026amp; Information Science | General\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCraig Robertson is associate professor of media studies at Northeastern University and author of \u003ci\u003eThe Passport in America: The History of a Document\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Minnesota Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42698598678765,"sku":"9781517909468","price":27.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0550\/8097\/6621\/products\/img_19af1c0c-d32d-4fa8-88fb-abc32e1289d1.jpg?v=1649903422","url":"https:\/\/sureshotbooks.com\/products\/the-filing-cabinet-a-vertical-history-of-information-9781517909468","provider":"SureShot Books Publishing LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}