Shannon’s Kyoto Prize had a lasting benefit that outlived the award proceedings: he was required to deliver a laureate lecture, one of his last and longest public statements, “Development of Communication and Computing, and My Hobby.” Shannon began the lecture by discussing history itself—or rather, the problem of how history was taught in his home country: I don’t know how history is taught here in Japan, but in the United States in my college days, most of the time was spent on the study of political leaders and wars—Caesars, Napoleons and Hitlers. I think this is totally wrong. The
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