Library

Human beings have a long history of encountering information. This history written by James Gleick unexpectedly begins with the African drum language. Before they made the leap directly to mobile phones, indigenous African tribes used drums to convey messages, but how did they do it? Subsequent chapters go on to recount several far-reaching key events in this history, including the invention of writing, Robert Cowdery's first English dictionary, Charles Babbage's difference engine and Ada Byron's program, the Sharpe brothers' signal tower and Morse code. But humans began to consciously understand and utilize information starting from the information theory founded by Claude Shannon in 1948. Shannon's information theory not only promoted the development of information technology, but also triggered the information turn in many disciplines, changing people's understanding of things such as Maxwell's demon, the coding of life, memes, randomness, quantum information theory, 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 floods us like a torrent, causing us to suffer from 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 and Google are one of our responses. Whatever your stance on the future of information, one thing is certain: we humans are the creatures of information.