Interview with Zoe Koskinidou

Let’s start with the initial idea for the book—what inspired you to create a nonfiction title for children and especially one with such a complex, abstract and vast topic?

The idea began in 2006 when I came across a course at UC Berkeley called The History of Information. I had never heard anything like it. It completely reframed how I thought about history—it is not just as a sequence of events, but as a story that builds on itself, one thing paves the way for another. Information is absolutely central to how all of society operates. Each era is defined by the ways it stored and shared information. The series of lectures explained the world to me in such a vivid way that I knew immediately I had to do something with it. It seemed so poignant and prescient and central to how the world works. For years I was weighing up whether it would be better suited to a book or an animated film. I settled on the idea of a book. I think it is so important to know, especially to younger readers. It would have been the kind of book I wish I’d had as a teenager: something that explained how the world works behind the scenes.

How do you approach explaining complex ideas like “information” to children without oversimplifying or losing the depth of the concept or leaving out important stuff?

The goal was not to simplify the ideas but to clarify them. Visual storytelling plays the key role in that. That is what made me most excited about this project. The whole story is entirely visual. It is the history of graphics told through graphics. If you present concepts through images, they can be more understandable. But also, if done right, they remain just as complex and nuanced. It simplifies the content without reducing it. I tried to keep the depth of the material intact while using visuals to do the heavy lifting.

Can you walk us through your creative process for the creation of this book? How did you decide on the structure of the book to balance text and illustration?

It took many years—seventeen, in fact. It mostly follows the structure that the Berkeley lecturers set out in their course. The structure followed the natural evolution of information technologies: from language, to writing, to print, to radio and tv, and finally to the internet and AI. That gave the book its narrative spine. From there, I worked to balance the text and illustrations in a way that let readers absorb complex ideas quickly and intuitively. I added in one chapter myself, the chapter on ‘Drawing’. I admit I may be biased because I’m an illustrator but I think drawing really is the key information technology. It was what started the whole history off and what led to writing and so I think it is really crucial in the story and it deserved its own chapter. I think when the invention of writing is explained as a by-product of drawing it makes it a lot clearer how it really came about. It’s also perhaps my favourite chapter in the book because it is so visual.

You cover everything from cave paintings to the internet. Was there a particular era or subject that you found especially fun or maybe more difficult to illustrate?

The evolution of the alphabet: how drawings turned themselves into writing, was really interesting and fun to explain in visuals. Showing how a picture of an ox head turned upside down to become the letter A is a good example of the book’s whole premise—its a good example of how information technologies evolve. Illustrating the more abstract aspects of AI and computing was more challenging. But really, as I argue in the book, all these ideas come from graphics, so it makes sense to tell the story with infographics. This is the thread that runs throughout the whole book, the personal computer only became a game changing technology when it began using intuitive graphical user interfaces. Like and share, and comment and play graphical user interfaces of today are an evolution of these very same ideas.

Were there any big ideas or topics you had to leave out because they were too complex—or maybe didn’t quite fit the story?

Yes, there were a few. The book could easily have doubled or tripled in length. I would have loved to do more on animal communication, and a page on ancient India and how they they pioneered maths, maybe one on the history of the poster. I would have loved to do one on cinema. But I needed to draw a line. It was better to leave them out because although they are all fascinating threads they didn’t add anything crucial to the central story. The story that it is information that drives society and created the modern world. I want the book to be read from cover to cover and it was already getting too long. So the aim was to make it as concise as possible.

There’s a chapter where you talk about propaganda and then bring in advertising and public relations. It’s quite a clever—and funny—way of framing those concepts for kids. What was your thinking behind this?

Yes. Many people point that out. We see ‘propaganda’ as a toxic corruption of the media, something that only happens in authoritarian regimes like Nazi Germany, the USSR and North Korea. But this, I believe, is the central lie in our society. As i say in the book, wherever there is information there is disinformation. That is true of every era and every society including our own. Whilst western states do not murder journalists as much as they did in Nazi Germany our media is nevertheless distorted in other ways. It is just as corrupt, and in many ways our society has more propaganda than authoritarian states do. Whilst they use the threat of violence to keep society in line we use persuasion. As Noam Chomsky says ‘Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.’

Many people do not realise how linked advertising is to propaganda. In many languages it is in fact the same word. After the First World War the talent that had worked for propaganda bureaus in Britain and the US moved into advertising and branding. The US government had hired and trained up an enormous number of staff to work at their propaganda bureau. 150,000 were hired in the US alone within the first year of their war effort. After the war these copywriters and illustrators continued to use their persuasion skills, rather than working for the state they began to work in the commercial world. 

Advertising surrounds us everywhere in the modern world. We might see it as relatively benign, as an annoyance that interrupts our programmes. But it is not an annoyance to the media. It is, in effect their employer. Advertising is central to our media, it pays for the programmes and chooses which programmes it wants to support. Our ‘free press’ is not free, it is paid for. And so we only see content that advertisers will endorse. I wanted readers to see how control of narrative always follows the control of information. What we now call public relations traces back to techniques used in propaganda and in fact the word ‘public relations’ was coined by Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, who was a pioneer in propaganda during the first world war. 

There’s also a powerful two-page spread on Nazism, which stood out to me, as it’s a part of history that’s not often discussed with children (in books, in class, with parents, etc). What led you to include this topic in the book, and why do you think it’s important for kids to understand how media can be used for total control of the masses?

To me that section really is the most important chapter. Not just the page on Nazism but the pages that lead up to it and the pages after. We must remember that our media today is controlled in not dissimilar ways. Nazism is one of the clearest historical examples of media being used to manipulate an entire population. They managed to capture the largest audiences in history at this time. I believe young readers are capable of understanding this if it’s presented with care. Avoiding difficult topics doesn’t protect them; it leaves them unprepared. This book is about equipping readers with context and critical thinking.

The narration begins and ends with the human brain— starting with cognition, language, and drawing, and circling back to mind and understanding at the end. What guided this framing choice?

The central idea is that everything begins and ends with how we process information. Drawing, writing, computation—all of it extends human cognition. Starting and ending with the brain felt like a natural way to bookend the story and underline that information isn’t just something external. It shapes how we think, act, and see the world.

Was there a moment during your research when you were surprised by something you learned about the history of information?

One that stood out was the story of the Chinese emperor’s seal. The Chinese Emperor used a seal to authenticate his orders and prove that the directives had come from the Imperial Palace. China was the largest empire in the ancient world, and the Palace used 50,000 horses to send regular directives across the land. The interesting thing is that this proof of the emperor evolved over time and soon came to represent Imperial power itself. If the seal was stolen by a rival to the emperor, then the person who managed to steal it became the legitimate new emperor. This became know as the ‘Mandate of Heaven’: whoever controlled the Emperor’s seal was the Emperor. That kind of shift, when control of the information becomes power itself—is a recurring theme throughout history and is true today. We saw it again with all the Big Tech owners standing next to President Trump during his inauguration ceremony. I close the book with this argument, in a fascinating book called ‘Cybernetics’ the great mathematician and information theorist, Norbert Weiner, argued that in fact information is control. It was he who coined the word ‘cyber’, the idea that information and control are the same thing.

Your signature style—bold, playful, and colourful, always with a sense of humour—stands out. How did your design and illustration choices support this book’s cause?

My style is quite bold and playful, which, I hope, makes the material more approachable. I wanted the visuals to tell the story as much as the text. They aren’t just decorative—they do explanatory work, especially when dealing with abstract concepts. I made all the ‘information’ throughout the book in colour while the characters and cities are in black and white. Also the drawings in the beginning of the book are drawn crudely as they would be if they were made by prehistoric artists on cave walls and these drawings evolve as the tools and writing materials improve throughout the book. So you can see the information technology improve and evolve  on every page.

Today’s children are growing up immersed in digital information. How do you think this shapes their understanding of knowledge, correct information, and even human history?

They have to navigate an overwhelming information environment without knowing the full context. They need to stand back. But I think adults would benefit from this wider perspective too. We all talk about ‘right wing’ and ‘left wing’ but how did this strange idea of dividing all thought into two camps come about?  I suspect many adults couldn’t answer that question. I explain the history of it in the book, but alongside all sort of other histories that we dont often hear. The history of mass media; radio, tv, advertising, propaganda, computing, machine reading, AI.  These things have had such an  enormous effect on society. And they explain so many things. Like why it was the US that was the country that began championing free speech. The internet was seen as a utopian place in the 1990s but that gradually changed. Today the internet and social media is more like a dystopia than a utopia. If you read the book you can see how this shift was actually predictable and many information technologies like radio and newspapers followed exactly the same path.

Understanding where information comes from, and how it has shaped society is more important than ever. We all need to stand back and see the context of what we see in the media.

Do you hope this book helps children think more critically about the information they encounter?

That’s my intention. Not to give them answers, but to give them the ability to ask better questions. Who made this? Why? What are they saying and what are they not saying? If readers come away more curious and skeptical—in the best sense—then the book has done its job.

Judging from your experience, what do children understand better than adults when it comes to big-picture ideas, like the flow of information?

Children are less invested in fixed narratives. They’re open to new frameworks and more comfortable questioning assumptions. They also grasp visual communication incredibly quickly. That flexibility gives them a certain clarity when it comes to seeing patterns that adults might overlook. 

For my last question, I’d love to ask about the dedication: “To Geoff Nunberg.” Could you tell us more about him, and why you chose to dedicate the book to this professor?

Geoff Nunberg was the professor who, alongside Paul Duguid, taught the UC Berkeley course, ‘The History of Information’ that was the inspiration to this book. I reached out to Geoff and Paul in 2009 and they generously shared their reading lists and thoughts over the years as I sent back and forth different drafts. Geoff sadly passed away in 2020. This book wouldn’t exist without his influence, so it felt only right to dedicate it to him. I am also extremely grateful to Paul Duguid who also helped with the editing. He very generously helped with the final edit of the book.