Human beings have a long history of encountering information. James Gleick's history unexpectedly begins with the African drum language (Chapter 1). Native African tribes used drums with only two notes, high and low, to convey complex messages, but how did they do it? Subsequent chapters go on to describe several far-reaching key events in this history, including the invention of writing (Chapter 2), Robert Cowdery's English Dictionary (Chapter 3), Charles Babbage's Difference Engine and Ada Byron's program (Chapter 4), the Sharp brothers' signal tower and Morse code (Chapter 5).
But humans began to consciously understand and utilize information starting from the information theory founded by Claude Shannon in 1948 (Chapter 6 and 7). Shannon's information theory not only greatly promoted the development of information technology, but also triggered the information turn in many other disciplines (Chapter 8), changing people's understanding of things such as Maxwell's Demon (Chapter 9), the coding of life (Chapter 10), memes (Chapter 11), randomness (Chapter 12), quantum information theory (Chapter 13), etc. Some scientists even believe that the basis of the world is not matter or energy, but information. As physicist John Wheeler said, "Everything starts with bits."
Nowadays, information is flooding us like a torrent, making us deeply troubled by information anxiety, information overload, and information fatigue. But looking back at history, this is nothing new, and people have always figured out ways to deal with it. Wikipedia (Chapter 14) and Google (Chapter 15) are one of our responses. Whatever your stance on the future of information, one thing is certain: we humans are the creatures of information.
As the author of best-selling books such as "Chaos", "Feynman", "Faster and Faster", and "Newton", Gleick not only meticulously restores historical details and explains various theories in the book, but also vividly portrays several people who are not well-known to the public. Characters: Charles Babbage, the pioneer of programmable computers and ahead of his time, Ada Byron, the daughter of poet Byron, Alan Turing, the father of computer science and jealous of talents, and the protagonist of the book, Claude Shannon, the father of information theory.
Reader comments
A very profound book that is close to the truth. It reveals the relationship between information and energy. This is an area that is rarely covered in other cognitive improvement books (because it is approached from the perspective of physics). It is subversive and inspiring at the first level.
This book is rich in content and tells the history of information from a unique perspective. Not only does it introduce important historical events and figures, it also explains some complex theories in a simple and easy-to-understand manner. The author's descriptions are vivid and gave me a deeper understanding of the development of the information. It's a great read for people like me who are interested in technology and history.
Recommended by the teacher, very beautiful.
The breadth is good, but the depth is still a bit lacking. When compared to a popular science book, it scores 8 to 9 points.
A very profound book that is close to the truth. It reveals the relationship between information and energy. This is an area that is rarely covered in other cognitive improvement books (because it is approached from the perspective of physics). It is subversive and inspiring at the first level.
This book is rich in content and tells the history of information from a unique perspective. Not only does it introduce important historical events and figures, it also explains some complex theories in a simple and easy-to-understand manner. The author's descriptions are vivid and gave me a deeper understanding of the development of the information. It's a great read for people like me who are interested in technology and history.
Recommended by the teacher, very beautiful.
The breadth is good, but the depth is still a bit lacking. When compared to a popular science book, it scores 8 to 9 points.