The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

by James Gleick

When particles or quantum systems are entangled, their properties remain correlated across vast distances and vast times. Light-years apart, they share something that is physical, yet not only physical. Spooky paradoxes arise, unresolvable until one understands how entanglement encodes information, measured in bits or their drolly named quantum counterpart, qubits.

In the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of itself. Some information technologies were appreciated in their own time, but others were not. One that was sorely misunderstood was the African talking drum.

Homer,

Odyssey, Iliad

Virgil,

Eclogues, the Aeneid

Aesch...

Oresteia

Mycenae.

“Troy has fallen.”

For the hours of several places anticipate each other,

(There Is No Dictionary in the Mind)

For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer

your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom.

but even Plato could see some of the power of this disconnection. The one speaks to the multitude.