James Gleick at his best. The uses and missuses of the concept of information are described, explained and linked. Information is physical, yes, as stated by Landauer and delightfully explained by Gleick, but also, information is not equivalent to meaning, as properly stated by Nyqvist and Shannon. Both terms, the physical aspect of information and the lack of meaning present in information (as meaning is subjective) are widely explained in a very clear way.

The mathematical theory of information is presented in a very interesting way, with several remarks, citations and some anecdotes. Starting with the drum communication system, permeated with a lot of redundancy in order to account of the tonal original African language , to the modern communication and computing systems, Gleick leads the reader to a very exciting journey, that of information. Information in the mathematical sense.

No doubt I will encourage my students in the first semesters of computer science and maths to read it.