Through an analysis of both education policy and knowledge creation, this article explores the historical dimensions of two key features of the "new information age." In the field of education, it documents the development of a progressive education policy in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Birmingham, UK. This policy extended access to schooling, attempted to ameliorate the effects of poverty and ill health and made important innovations in school curricula, architecture and administration. These were real and important achievements, but they were also in many respects ambiguous ones. These ambiguities can be read in the vast set of educational records that the innovators were both responsible for and dependent on. For the knowledge created and stored as a result of educational progressivism was also used as a means of surveillance and as a method for monitoring and disciplining urban populations. Based on a critical reading of Foucault, the article presents evidence that helps illuminate processes of knowledge creation, storage and exchange.