The Information
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 (1791-1871), Ada Byron, Samuel Morse, Alan Turing, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins and John Archibald Wheeler.
Stats for nerds
61recommend
92mentions
81people
2011–2026years
71% recommend27% neutral2% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The entire internet has been a Dunning-Kruger amplifier since Altavista and Webcrawler. We're going to keep getting better at it.
I recommend the book "The Information" (2011, James Gleick) for a grounded history of how we've slowly gone from using smoke signals and drums to transmit information to how we crossed the inflection point between being limited in how much information we could consume to instead being limited in how well we could curate the information we consume. Curation will continue to improve, and misplaced confidence is merely one downstream effect.
I also recommend, for those struggling with these effects, the book "Amusing Ourselves to Death" (1985, Neil Postman, updated in 2005 by his son), to understand the concept of Information Action Ratio - how to best target your curation.
- I would also recommend "The Information" by James Gleick. It covers all of known history so of course the scope is much broader, but there are familiar themes that accompany communication breakthroughs e.g. a train with a fleeing bank robber moves faster than the speed of our communication so we are all going to die.
- There's a book with lots more of this sort of thing called The Information by James Gleick
- I was going to say the same! I got it years ago, it's hard to top a math book with a quote from a certain Al Einstein on the back cover singing its praises! Morris Kline's "Mathematics for the Nonmathematician" takes a similar approach, as I believe other books by the author do. Can also recommend "Code" by Charles Petzold and "The Information" by James Gleick, while not comprehensive they do cover the development of key mathematical insights over time.
- I think you would enjoy reading James Gleick's The Information!
Edit0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_drum
It begins by talking about this, maybe that's a good start! It documents that they are able to transmit complex messages like jokes and proverbs entirely through rhythm!
- 'The Path To Power', Caro, first volume of his LBJ biography. Elsewhere ('Working'), Caro has explained that his career in writing is to make clear how power is acquired and used. I think he achieves this goal here and am looking forward to the remaining volumes.
'Spiritual Formation', Henri Nouwen. A deep, Catholic, thinker with much to offer those who are looking in this direction.
'In A Sunburned Country', Bryson. Bryson is an ideal travel companion.
'The Information', Gleick. A tour of the ideas and technologies underneath how we became so dependent on bits.
'Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons'... the most worthwhile part was how my son and I bonded over working through the lessons.
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