Book Review: The Information

I would like to recommend a new book out by James Gleick titled, “The Information: A history, A Theory and A Flood’ – which I just read on my iPad.

http://www.amazon.com/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/0375423729/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299336767&sr=8-1

You might recall that in the 80s Gleick wrote the ‘Chaos’ that laid out Complexity Theory to popular audiences. Words like Strange Attractor, Butterfly Effect, Fractals and Mandelbrot joined the popular culture. It was such a sensation that folks created music and paintings of complexity theory images! He also wrote a book on Richard Feynman titled ‘Genius’ and another one on Isaac Newton – both terrific reads.

Mandelbrot Set

This new book, "The Information,"  is a tour de force. He introduces us to Claude Shannon, the father of information theory – whose master’s thesis at MIT is considered by professionals as the ‘single most significant work in the 20th century’ – a century that included Einstein! Claude Shannon was raised in Gaylord, MI and went to U. of M.

The book shows how Claude Shannon precisely defines the word ‘information’, just like Newton precisely defined the words Mass, Time and Force. The fruits of the digital revolution that we enjoy today can be traced directly back to Claude Shannon’s seminal work at the Bell Labs.

Claude Shannon

Below is a brief YouTube video produced by U.C. Television on Claude Shannon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2Whj_nL-x8






The Nobel prize winning Physicist Wheeler spent time with Claude Shannon at Princeton, and was impressed with him. Towards the end of his life, acknowledging Shannon’s work, Wheeler says, “It is bit.’ Meaning that the world (it) that Physicists are trying to describe is really ‘bit’ (information). Which is in a way is a strange echo of an old saying in Sanskrit from India – ‘You are It.’ This phrase meaning that there is no difference between the individual and nature. So I put these two statements together to derive the following corollary – You are a Bit (!) – meaning we are all pieces of information!   :-)

Gleick however points out a potentially troubling consequence to Shannon’s work. What Shannon did was to explicitly separate meaning from data. Thus the digital revolution is efficient, mechanized and far reaching. However it seems that the task of 21st century leadership is to forcefully connect meaning back to data.

James Gleick

As far as the overall book is concerned, it would be a disservice to say it is a book about Claude Shannon.  I would suggest that the author uses Claude Shannon as a narrative device around which to spin this fascinating tale.  Indeed he goes farther back than Plato and Socrates in History and as far away as African Tribal drummers through to Charles Babbage and Alan Turing.  He traces the digital revolution past its seminal inception at the Bell Labs and carries out forward to the flood we are experiencing today.  And leaves us at the precipice of a new world wondering what new turns await us next.



I feel like not just crediting Gleick for this well written book, but celebrate a writer who can maintain such a high standard of science writing for over thirty years.