The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick is a book I've had sitting on the shelves for a bit. It was not next on my list, but I went looking for some books that I could pick up in an audio format to hear in the car and this was the first one that was available in a nearby library. So, I have the book and the audio. I enjoyed Gleick's book, Chaos, a few decades or so ago and I really respect his ability to use his journalistic talents to make science understandable.
Started: 6/25/2016
Completed: 7/23/2016
Recommendation: Mild recommendation
Recommended By: Nobody
Review:
I would never have thought it would be necessary to describe what the nature of "information" is to anyone. It seems a ubiquitous and well-understood term. On the other hand, there are a variety of types of information (as well as methods of conveyance) that would never have occurred to me. The exhaustive look at language as a method of conveying information and the implications thereof had, frankly, not occurred to me although it was obvious the instant he mentioned it. Moreover, the implications of the printed page on the way in which we think, forget how we communicate, is a complication I would not have realized without careful thought.
It is also worth noting that I would have been inclined to find definitions for a whole bunch of words if they had not been either explicitly defined in the book or used with great pains to provide meaningful context. Since the book is about information and a fair portion of the early part of the book revolves around defining words, this makes sense.
The book is a trip down memory lane for most of those familiar with the history of computing and certainly those familiar with crypto-analytics. For me, the revelation surrounded the role of Claude Shannon, so it must be clear that while I am conversant with Information Theory, I am not a student of its history. In that sense, this book was good for me because it opened up some more avenues of research of which I had not been aware.
This is a mild recommendation because I fear that if someone is not interested in Information Theory, Cryptography, and/or Computer Science, this book swiftly becomes much too technical. For those with interests in these areas, this book is unlikely to provide a lot of new information. If you know Babbage, Turing, and Shannon, this book will fill you in on a few more details. If you know Wiener, Ada Lovelace, and Clement, then the odds are good that you already have a strong sense of this material and it is highly unlikely, to my eye, that you will learn much more.
I would never have thought it would be necessary to describe what the nature of "information" is to anyone. It seems a ubiquitous and well-understood term. On the other hand, there are a variety of types of information (as well as methods of conveyance) that would never have occurred to me. The exhaustive look at language as a method of conveying information and the implications thereof had, frankly, not occurred to me although it was obvious the instant he mentioned it. Moreover, the implications of the printed page on the way in which we think, forget how we communicate, is a complication I would not have realized without careful thought.
It is also worth noting that I would have been inclined to find definitions for a whole bunch of words if they had not been either explicitly defined in the book or used with great pains to provide meaningful context. Since the book is about information and a fair portion of the early part of the book revolves around defining words, this makes sense.
The book is a trip down memory lane for most of those familiar with the history of computing and certainly those familiar with crypto-analytics. For me, the revelation surrounded the role of Claude Shannon, so it must be clear that while I am conversant with Information Theory, I am not a student of its history. In that sense, this book was good for me because it opened up some more avenues of research of which I had not been aware.
This is a mild recommendation because I fear that if someone is not interested in Information Theory, Cryptography, and/or Computer Science, this book swiftly becomes much too technical. For those with interests in these areas, this book is unlikely to provide a lot of new information. If you know Babbage, Turing, and Shannon, this book will fill you in on a few more details. If you know Wiener, Ada Lovelace, and Clement, then the odds are good that you already have a strong sense of this material and it is highly unlikely, to my eye, that you will learn much more.
