This is an extraordinary study that shows how humans slowly transitioned toward the use of alphabetical order to organize all manner of things from files to reference works. While it might seem obvious to us now, it was a slow revolution in how people think about the world around them. Earlier conceptions of the "right" way to organize things often revolved around hierarchy or grouped ideas around subject concepts, but as the world became more complex and the information landscape grew astronomically, it was necessary to resort to new methods of organization. Author Judith Flanders presents a fascinating history of the development of many types of organization systems, showing how truly innovative many of them were, including one of my favorites, the card catalog.
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