How Information Got Re-Invented | Hacker News Reader

How Information Got Re-Invented

nautil.us

70 pointsdnetesn16 comments

Another decent in-depth book on this topic that I can recommend is The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick[0]. A bit dry at times but somewhat interesting if anyone is looking for a high-level look at quantifying and managing information.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8701960-the-information

Good book. My only problem was that I felt the breadth of the information minimized the depth. Seemed like each page could be its own book.

Claude Shannon's wife Betty doesn't even get a mention. If you have so much detail about how he behaved when he was thinking, there's no reason to minimize her role. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/betty-shannon-un...

It's an excerpt from the same book by the same two authors, who are promoting it in another publication with another focus. It's missing in this article, which is focussing on the theory, not on his life, but it's in the books big picture. Maybe they had it in there and pitched an exclusive piece to different magazines? Who knows.

A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman.

Ok, that makes sense. It just seemed odd to have so much information from his girlfriend and then not a word about his wife.

Actually it looks like the reason is purely chronological:

This article is about the research and live events following up to the publication of his seminal work A Mathematical Theory of Communication in 1948 and ends there.

He met his wife Betty in '48 after most of this already happened.

If you want to read some German. Dietmar Dath's Skye Boat song is a more fictional hommage to Shannon.

http://literaturkritik.de/id/4437

The book goes into a lot more depth about her importance to his life and work. Between her and what I learned about Klara von Neumann in the book Turing's Cathedral I've become very interested in the roles of the wives of the important men of our field. It's a shame they get so left out of most histories.

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I wonder what they consider "the birth of the information age"? The Lyons Electronic Office (first business computer)? The US Social Security Administration (the first mechanized, nationally centralized data processing service at scale)? Early Hollerith systems? Pneumatic tubes?

It's about Shannon 1948 and (interestingly) its precursors.

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(Right-click + "Open Link in Incognito Window", or your browser's equivalent.)

Doesn't help. They must be using a third-party cookie "to show your reading progress". (Right.)

Nautilus uses cookies to manage your digital subscription and show you your reading progress. It's just not the same without them. Please sign in to Nautilus Prime or turn your cookies on to continue reading. Thank you!

"Site won't load with cookies blocked."

     curl -o x.htm http://nautil.us/issue/51/limits/how-information-got-re_invented

Retrieves full article. No cookies needed.

Open file://x.htm in browser of choice to read.

Optional: Remove javascript

     sed -i '/./{/<script/,/<\/script/d;}' x.htm

https://outline.com/DTkAZ2

Archive.is as well.

Works fine if you also disable javascript.

I've started reading the book this is excerpted from: A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age It's very well written.

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