Hacker News Reader

I recently read the Shannon biography 'A Mind at Play' [0] which I guess is the full version of the article (same authors). It does (IMHO) a very good job at explaining entropy / information.

[0] https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/A-Mind-at-Play/Jimmy-...

View on HN

I enjoyed the story but found the author(s) practically peddling Shannon's importance as if any of that was needed. All in all the writing in form and substance seemed to me of low quality and in search of dramatic revision and editing. Great history job and lazy writing,

>I enjoyed the story but found the author(s) practically peddling Shannon's importance as if any of that was needed.

The vast majority of the public have never heard of Shannon, or have but don't really understand how important he was, so yes, it was needed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com