The Information

It lacked a little in defining the social import of The Information. However, the book fantastically lays out a history of science and human knowledge that is compelling and exquisitely written. Not the easiest read, but one I wholly recommend.

Wow - excellent book. A bit of a surprise, to be honest.

8 of 10. Great book filled with many interesting ideas. However, it suffers from the same problem that most subject-based books suffer -- the author switches from topic to topic without weaving a strong thread through his book. He covers topics such as African talking drums, Babbage's difference engine, Claude Shannon's information theories, Morse's and other's codes, Ada Byron's computer...more

8 of 10. Great book filled with many interesting ideas. However, it suffers from the same problem that most subject-based books suffer -- the author switches from topic to topic without weaving a strong thread through his book. He covers topics such as African talking drums, Babbage's difference engine, Claude Shannon's information theories, Morse's and other's codes, Ada Byron's computer program, Wikipedia (inclusionists vs removers), etc. To be honest, the subject matter is some heavy stuff. Gleick covers a variety of subjects from biology to quantum physics to mechanics to engineering to linguistics. Gleick even veers into philosophy, with questions such as "If a book was burned, where does the information go?", examples of sentences that have circular logic, and the search for the uninteresting number. Here are a few interesting ideas. English language has ~50-75% redundancy built in -- it helps us understand each other in noisy environments. Information is chaos and unpredictability -- if you knew what the speaker was about to say, then it would no longer be information. Literate people think differently than illiterate ones -- they're comfortable with abstractions.   hide

This is a good overview of where we are with information theory. Its starts with a historical look at communication moving from societies based on oral tradition to the changes that came with written language. Then it moves into interesting looks at scientific endeavors around communication as written word transforms into the all-encompassing cyberspace we know today.

There are a few...more

This is a good overview of where we are with information theory. Its starts with a historical look at communication moving from societies based on oral tradition to the changes that came with written language. Then it moves into interesting looks at scientific endeavors around communication as written word transforms into the all-encompassing cyberspace we know today.

There are a few pages that are overly technical and mathematical that I didn't understand, but for the most part it is very accessible and makes for a helpful guide to our modern world.

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Middle chapters are technical histories. Last two chapters were the most rewarding on the nature of information.