The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
From the bestselling author of the acclaimed Chaos and Genius comes a thoughtful and provocative exploration of the big ideas of the modern era: Information, communication, and information theory.
Acclaimed science writer James Gleick presents an eye-opening vision of how our relationship to information has transformed the very nature of human consciousness. A fascinating intellectual journey through the history of communication and information, from the language of Africa’s talking drums to the invention of written alphabets; from the electronic transmission of code to the origins of information theory, into the new information age and the current deluge of news, tweets, images, and blogs. Along the way, Gleick profiles key innovators, including Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Samuel Morse, and Claude Shannon, and reveals how our understanding of information is transforming not only how we look at the world, but how we live.
A New York Times Notable Book
A Los Angeles Times and Cleveland Plain Dealer Best Book of the Year
Winner of the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
Reviews (177)
If you work in computers/software/information sciences, this should be a must-read
As someone who has been in computers and information sciences since 1970, this was an amazing and entertaining book. I knew a lot of the history, having lived some of it, but a lot of this was new to me. Very well-researched and presented in a clear and highly readable style. This volume clearly covers the concepts and development of theories of information. It covers both theory and practice and whether you are a beginning computer programmer or an information science theorist, you should find something in here that you didn't know and that will awaken you to some new ideas. If you like this volume, try "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter. That is an eclectic and entertaining mix of mathematics, art, and music philosophy, tying together apparently dissimilar disciplines into a mind-bending tour-de-force.
“In the beginning was the word” , according to John.’’
“Yet the past does come back into focus. “In the beginning was the word” , according to John.’’ How important the ‘word’ or information? “Now even biology has become an information science, a subject of messages, instructions, and code. Genes encapsulate information and enable procedures for reading it in and writing it out. Life spreads by networking. The body itself is an information processor. Memory resides not just in brains but in every cell. No wonder genetics bloomed along with information theory. DNA is the quintessential information molecule, the most advanced message processor at the cellular level—an alphabet and a code, 6 billion bits to form a human being.’’ How significant? “What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, not warm breath, not a ‘spark of life,’ ” declares the evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins. “It is information, words, instructions.… If you want to understand life, don’t think about vibrant, throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology.” Dawkins! Is he the only one? “When photons interact, what are they really doing? Exchanging bits, transmitting quantum states, processing information. The laws of physics are the algorithms. Every burning star, every silent nebula, every particle leaving its ghostly trace in a cloud chamber is an information processor. The universe computes its own destiny.’’ Now this takes some thought. Simple example — when heating water, the heat source is signaling the water to move faster (get hot). How? By transmitting energy (?) from source (fire) to receiver (water). What’s really, fundamentally occurring, is transfer of information. Weird. Who agrees? “It is insubstantial, yet as scientists finally come to understand information, they wonder whether it may be primary: more fundamental than matter itself. They suggest that the bit is the irreducible kernel and that information forms the very core of existence. Bridging the physics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, John Archibald Wheeler, the last surviving collaborator of both Einstein and Bohr, put this manifesto in oracular monosyllables: “It from Bit.” Information gives rise to “every it—every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself.” “ This is another way of fathoming the paradox of the observer: that the outcome of an experiment is affected, or even determined, when it is observed. Not only is the observer observing, she is asking questions and making statements that must ultimately be expressed in discrete bits. “What we call reality,” Wheeler wrote coyly, “arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions.” He added: “All things physical are information-theoretic in origin, and this is a participatory universe.” The whole universe is thus seen as a computer—a cosmic information-processing machine.’’ “Tomorrow,” Wheeler declares, “we will have learned to understand and express all of physics in the language of information.” Another outstanding revelation was Gödel’s discovery . . . “The twenty-four-year-old Gödel believed in the perfection of the bottle that was PM but doubted whether mathematics could truly be contained. This slight young man turned his doubt into a great and horrifying discovery. He found that lurking within PM—and within any consistent system of logic—there must be monsters of a kind hitherto unconceived: statements that can never be proved, and yet can never be disproved. There must be truths , that is, that cannot be proved—and Gödel could prove it.’’ Gleick does outstanding job explaining Gödel’s work. Not easiest idea to absorb. But, overwhelmingly significant. Who understood? “This young mathematician was in the process of moving to the United States, where he would soon and for the rest of his life be called John von Neumann. He understood Gödel’s import at once; it stunned him, but he studied it and was persuaded. No sooner did Gödel’s paper appear than von Neumann was presenting it to the mathematics colloquium at Princeton. Incompleteness was real. It meant that mathematics could never be proved free of self-contradiction. And “the important point,” von Neumann said, “is that this is not a philosophical principle or a plausible intellectual attitude, but the result of a rigorous mathematical proof of an extremely sophisticated kind.” Either you believed in mathematics or you did not.’’ Recalls Pascal . . . ‘Reasons first use is to teach its limits’. Chapter 1 Drums That Talk Chapter 2 The Persistence of the Word Chapter 3. Two Wordbooks Chapter 4. To Throw the Powers of Thought into Wheel-Work Chapter 5. A Nervous System for the Earth Chapter 6. New Wires, New Logic Chapter 7. Information Theory Chapter 8. The Informational Turn Chapter 9. Entropy and Its Demons Chapter 10. Life’s Own Code Chapter 11. Into the Meme Pool Chapter 12. The Sense of Randomness Chapter 13. Information Is Physical Chapter 14. After the Flood Chapter 15. New News Every Day Another intriguing explanation . . . “Schrödinger began with what he called the enigma of biological stability. In notable contrast to a box of gas, with its vagaries of probability and fluctuation, and in seeming disregard of Schrödinger’s own wave mechanics, where uncertainty is the rule, the structures of a living creature exhibit remarkable permanence. They persist, both in the life of the organism and across generations, through heredity. This struck Schrödinger as requiring explanation.’’ Yes . . . it does. “Schrödinger felt that evading the second law for a while, or seeming to, is exactly why a living creature “appears so enigmatic.” The organism’s ability to feign perpetual motion leads so many people to believe in a special, supernatural life force.’’ Life is constantly producing order from disorder, in contrast to every other physical process. Amazing! These slices illustrate Gleick’s style. Presenting serious, complex, obscure ideas, but clearly, respectfully and persuasively. Reader would benefit from some background, nevertheless not a bad work to start acquiring understanding. This important change in modern science, society and philosophy affects everyone. Adjusts everything we thought we knew. Great! This work closer to historical novel then science textbook. I listened to audible version. Well done. Work deserves ten stars! Hundreds of excellent notes with references (linked) Tremendous scholarship! Hundreds and hundreds of references in bibliography Amazing! Detailed index (linked) Eighteen illustrations
Information and its Entropy (or how we extract wisdom from a flood of data)
There are two milestones that shape the main theses in this book. The first is, naturally, Claude Shannon's formulation of his "Information Theory". Shannon is rightfully the main character of this historical saga (Gleick inserts biographical snippets of him and other main character throughout the book). The second pivotal moment comes with the intrusion of entropy in this theory and in the realization that information, as a physical entity, is also subjected to it. Gleick is a great writer and a pleasure to read. He presents his topic thematically, chronologically, and inserting biographical elements to shape something like an informational saga. He not only engages the reader but also explain difficult concepts in great detail (his presentation of Gödel's incompleteness theorems is an example.) With an intermixture of Entropy and Information Gleick discusses the most important issue from a human perspective: how to extract knowledge and wisdom from a flood of data. It is very interesting to realize that our modern discussion is just a last iteration of searching and filtering. From library indexing, book catalogs, almanacs through our modern Internet algorithms, the problem remains the same: when all information is available, how do you find it and when does it become meaningful? The author is right in using Borges's "The Library of Babel" as the perfect metaphor for it.
Enjoyable, very well written, history of information technology
The is the first James Gleick work that I have read. I am impressed. He writes cleanly and clearly, with little "fluff" and he seems to understand what he is writing about. It surely took a lot of background work before he was ready to tie so many disparate pieces of history together. I am also impressed in that Mr Gleick seems clearly to want to get the history right and not to push his personal ideas, interpretations, morals, and politics. I am reminded of the James Burke (BBC/PBS) works as he shows how knowledge that at first seems unrelated becomes related thru the work of many men and women scattered in time and geography. This is a history, not a textbook on information theory; there is only a smattering of simple formulae and drawings. The book uses the contributions of Claude Shannon as a thread to tie everyone's work together, but this is not a biography of Claude Shannon. The final chapters are a bit weak in my opinion, especially following such solid work as the preceding chapters. One of the weak (in my opinion) chapters is devoted entirely to Wikipedia. I am enthused with Wikipedia but I don't think it is yet clear what will be a future historian's view of Wikipedia and that it deserves its own full chapter. Overall I found the book to be very enjoyable and educational, adding considerably to my previous knowledge of Mr Shannon's work and bringing me new knowledge of how Mr Shannon's work linked with the work of others to bring us our current "information age."
charming, eclectic and very informative
I wondered what aspect of information Gleick would be treating - knowledge and its communication and storage, the rise of information in physics as a conceptual inverse to entropy and its engagement in black hole theory, or even the information age. My complete satisfaction with Gleick's past work, especially the thoroughness of his notes and his eclectic exposition, compelled me to preorder this book. The Information is all of the above and more. He presents a history, including the fundamentals of language as, for example, employed for millennia by African drummers, then traverses the history of writing (even spelling), difference and analysis engines to the evolution of telegraphs and telephony. The theory then champions the work of Godel, Turing, Shannon, von Neumann and Wiener as information takes on a physical context and leaps into the age of digital logic. Gleick's notes became my list for texts to further read around the topic. Then comes the flood, the rise on the internet, Wiki and the cloud. The Information is a rewarding and enjoyable read and contains many of the charming minutiae that Gleick's research uncovers. As he listed the objectives of Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica and its imminent demolition, Gleick describes the early days of the demolisher, Godel, attending smoky Viennese coffee houses and expounding logic. Highly recommended.
good information
I read Gleick's "Chaos" in the late 1980s in graduate school. It was an awakening, crystalizing many ideas that had been brewing in my mind and revealing clear paths that others had laid out. I use ideas from this book in my teaching and work today, and often refer students to the book. "Chaos" in many ways laid out the capabilities and limitations of deterministic science. I'm still coming to grips with big data, the grist of "The Information," and I figured who better but Gleick to help me through this thicket. He does not disappoint; the book is excellent. Gleick is a master of synthesis of big ideas and their history. He is especially good at weaving together notions from a variety of intellectual traditions: computer science, mathematics, biology, physics, etc. Still, this subject still troubles me as it is less clean and settled as nonlinear dynamics (a subject in which much remains to be learned). Nevertheless, "The Information" is a fine read. It may not inspire me as did "Chaos," but I may need to think about it some more!
We've been here before
One may get a sense, while reading this book, that (at least) the Western has progressed through deeper and deeper layers of information overload, and those who challenged themselves to compress the flow. Some of the most valuable and enlightening, chapters are those written about Lovelace and Babbage, Shannon, Chainin, Turing and others who created the "world brain" that continues to grow today. Only time will tell if the information wranglers have already held onto the original philosophies of those thinkers and tinkerer for too long. Gleick attempts to address this question in the (numbing) chapter on Wikipedia and the final chapter, New News Everyday. The wide-open nature of data flow reflects a time when data was simply analog communication buzzing along copper wires. Yet, today we've become both suppliers and consumers of data, and the overload and raw exposure to data collection seems to imply a need for data encapsulation, if not compartmentalization. There does not seem to be, at present, a 21st century "Claude Shannon" analogue for this problem. So the book remains extremely relevant as a process trace of the attempt to get The Information flowing: reliably, persistently, and rapidly. Understanding this process is essential to understanding our relationship to the information in the information/automation and what we consider "literacy" to be.
History is the Future
Harry Truman once said - 'The only new thing in the world is the old history we do not know'. At several points during James Gleick's magnum opus the same thought captures mind. Am I reading about telegraph? Or is this about twitter? The major essayists were/are complaining that human thoughts are getting constrained by the economy of the message. Is it true that skyscrapers were not as much enabled by progress in other faculties as much by ease of exchanging message (telephone)? Gleick starts by showing how communicating via drums -- as was in some parts of Africa -- could mathematically carry more 'subtlety of meaning' -- and puns - than many verbal languages. He reaches a crescendo in Claude Shannon's Information Theory that is the single thread of the journey in the book. Meanwhile we learn about Ada Lovelace's three step thinking process, Charles Babbage's 'grandeur', Qubits (and why it is like QTips), 'inclusionists' in WikiPedia, what is so special about the number 9814072356 and that the universe has so far done 10^120 "ops" to create roughly 10 ^90 bits of data. This is one book if we hide in one time capsule, humans who find it after 10,000 years may get confused whether it describes the history or..them.
Had high expectations based upon the description.
I was hoping for a book on information theory. Instead, I get a book that rambles on and on. The author does his best to constantly yank me out of the story with his poor writing. I actually threw the book away. I didn't want anyone in my family to accidently read it.
Little Intellectual Earthquakes
Here's an advertisement I want to place on craigslist because of this book: Desperately Seeking: Scintillating conversation partner who is preferably a math, physics, or logic major with strong knowledge of Quantum Physics and Information theory (of today and yesterday)and concepts including, but not limited to, the Babbage/Lovelace Difference Machine, Claude Shannon's math and entropy and cryptology, Turing's machine, logcal paradoxes, Maxwell's demon,The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Schrodinger's cat, Richard Dawkins' memes, Goding's proofs, Douglas Hofstadter's EVERYTHING. Lack of arrogance and condescension toward someone who almost failed high school math a must. Must be willing to meet in heavily populated public place. * * * * Aside from that, delving into mathematics as James Gleick tells it (algebra, calculus and Boolean logic, mostly ---A watered down version for us math scarred) makes me want to write a letter to every godawful mediocre monotone high school math teacher I ever had (so, all of them) and give them some major hell for not even bothering. Really? Overhead transparencies of meaningless equations and word problems involving trains and lots of bland white kids was all they had? Worksheets and odd numbered problems in a textbook? If I had only known that math is just another way of describing the world, just, ya know, symbolism like Dostoevsky used, but with numbers, and that all that misery and embarrassment and boredom working equations at the blackboard could actually get me closer to the secrets and meaning(s) of life...So, thanks to James Gleick for that too- late realization and doing what the uninspired mathbots should have done years ago. (Are you available for tutoring?) The Information is by no means an easy read, but if you have some previous knowledge of physics(mine came from having read Brian Greene's Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of something or other and a biography of e = mc2 but I suspect a bit of patience and wikipedia would also be just fine), you should be able to get through this without any major confusion. Anybody wanna talk physics and Information theory?
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