If we could not compress our messages, a single audio file would take hours to download, streaming Web video would be impossibly slow, and hours of television would demand a bookshelf of tapes, not a small box of discs. Because we can compress our messages, video files can be compacted to just a twentieth of their size. All of this communication—faster, cheaper, more voluminous—rests on Shannon’s realization of our predictability. All of that predictability is fat to be cut; since Shannon, our signals have traveled light.
