For theoretical work as suggestive as information theory—which to a casual reader might appear to offer a rubric for everything from mass media to geology—appropriation and misappropriation were inevitable. For instance: “Birds clearly have the problem of communicating in the presence of noise,” ran one contemporary paper. “An examination of birdsong on the basis of information theory might . . . suggest new types of field experiment and analysis.” Invoking “information theory,” like any fashionable term, was often a shortcut to research funding. At the same time, the elegance and simplicity
...more
