![]() ![]() The concept was so powerful, Gleick explains, that scientists from other fields such as psychology, biology, and physics took it as a model within their own fields. Gleick finds the influence of Shannon's information theory extending through to modern computing methods. Gleick describes the theories of the American mathematician Claude Shannon, who was among the first thinkers to propose a way to look at information as something apart from the meaning of a message. The author traces the development of the alphabet to represent language and form words and the transformation of the alphabet into codes to make it transferable along telegraph lines.Īlongside these technological developments, the concept of information as a measurable quantity also developed, beginning with the early attempts of Charles Babbage to construct a mechanical machine that would solve mathematical equations. Gleick traces advances in information technology from the two-tone drums used by sub-Saharan Africans to communicate over long distances through the development of the telegraph, telephone and internet. Information now floods our society, Gleick explains, requiring us to filter and search it to find what we want to know. "The Information" is an examination of the history of information theory as well as an essay on how computers and the internet have changed the way in which people interact with and approach information. ![]()
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