Data Science as an Interdiscipline: Historical Parallels from Information Science

Figures & Tables

Comparison between data science and information science.

POINTS OF COMPARISON	INFORMATION SCIENCE PRECURSORS, 1920S THROUGH 1950S	INFORMATION SCIENCE, 1960S THROUGH 1990S	DATA SCIENCE AND INFORMATION SCIENCE, 1990S THROUGH 2010S
Explosion of information/data resources	Growth of US government in 1930s Technical reports classified during World War II made public afterward Seized documents from Axis power countries	Cold War–driven expansion of research and research outputs Digital resources distributed through electronic media (magnetic and optical disc formats) Emergence of the web	Digital technologies, such as personal computers, cell phones, social media, and sensor networks, that enable faster generation of information and data Large volumes and varieties of data being made public on the internet
New technologies that promise to improve capacity	Microfilm and microfiche Punch card–based document sorting and selection tools Early computing technologies	Digital computing technologies Personal computers Internet and web technologies	High-bandwidth cellular networks Artificial intelligence and machine learning tools Advanced data mining Cloud computing App development on social media platforms
Diversity of participants	Engineers Librarians Mathematicians Scientists	Computer scientists Economists Engineers Information scientists Librarians and archivists Psychologists Scientists	Computer scientists and engineers Information scientists Librarians and archivists Philosophers Scientists Social scientists Statisticians