527 pages
English language
Published March 1, 2011
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood begins with the tale of colonial European explorers and their fascination with African talking drums and their observed use to send complex and widely understood messages back and forth between villages far apart, and over even longer distances by relay. The book then covers informational implications of technologies from drum signaling to the long distance telephone.
Starting with symbolic written language, The Information examines the history of intellectual insights central to the development of information theory, detailing key figures responsible such as Claude Shannon, Charles Babbage, Ada Byron, Samuel Morse, Alan Turing, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins and John Archibald Wheeler.
A good book if you want to know everything about information from the concept of information to the history & development of theories and technologies. A real soup to nuts book. One of the key things I learned is that information theory and all that goes into it is just not of interest to me. (shrug) But if you're into it, I bet you'll really like this book.
"How I need a drink! Alcoholic, of course, after the heavy chapters involving quantum mechanics; but we did estimate some digits by making very bad, not accurate, but so greatly efficient tools!" -Alexander Volokh
This mnemonic covers how I feel about the latter chapters in this book, which are quite heavy. Before that are histories and biographies of telegraphs, codes, and mathematicians. These are good, but not great. The chapters on Shannon are excellent, but I would refer readers to [b:A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age|32919530|A Mind at Play How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age|Jimmy Soni|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1495386506s/32919530.jpg|53537272] for even better coverage. After that, the quantum discussions of information loss (black holes) and quantum entanglement. This starts off well, but soon goes to depths that would leave the average reader gasping for air. Much rereading was necessary. After this, the ending comes perhaps too quickly.
As …
"How I need a drink! Alcoholic, of course, after the heavy chapters involving quantum mechanics; but we did estimate some digits by making very bad, not accurate, but so greatly efficient tools!" -Alexander Volokh
This mnemonic covers how I feel about the latter chapters in this book, which are quite heavy. Before that are histories and biographies of telegraphs, codes, and mathematicians. These are good, but not great. The chapters on Shannon are excellent, but I would refer readers to [b:A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age|32919530|A Mind at Play How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age|Jimmy Soni|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1495386506s/32919530.jpg|53537272] for even better coverage. After that, the quantum discussions of information loss (black holes) and quantum entanglement. This starts off well, but soon goes to depths that would leave the average reader gasping for air. Much rereading was necessary. After this, the ending comes perhaps too quickly.
As good as the (now dated) [b:Chaos: Making a New Science|64582|Chaos Making a New Science|James Gleick|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327941595s/64582.jpg|62690], as interesting (and thorough) as [b:Time Travel: A History|28587584|Time Travel A History|James Gleick|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1472314681s/28587584.jpg|48754828], but not rising above either of those works. 4 solid stars.
