The Dream Machine: J. C. R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal

by M. Mitchell Waldrop

And Shannon, being human, was not displeased. He was exceedingly disturbed, however, by a related development. Within a year or two of his initial publication, much to his horror, information theory started to become . . . popular. Anybody and everybody seemed to be plunging into the field, many without a clue as to what they were talking about. Scientists were beginning to submit grant applications that included references to information theory, whether or not their proposals actually had anything to do with it. It was becoming a scientific buzzword, much as chaos, artificial intelligence, and complexity would become buzzwords in the 1980s and 1990s. And Shannon hated all of it—the hype, the attention, the constant badgering by reporters. Most of all, he hated the way his ideas were being stretched beyond all recognition by idiots. Information theory was being greatly oversold, he asserted in a 1956 editorial entitled "The Bandwagon," and some moderation was in order.

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