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The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

by James Gleick (Goodreads Author)

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Alan said: " I'm reposting a comment I posted in the Slashdot discusion of this book:

I'm still confused. Is this the kind of book that has at least some equations and algorithms (I get that its not exclusively this) or is it the kind of book that mostly rampages

I'm reposting a comment I posted in the Slashdot discusion of this book:

I'm still confused. Is this the kind of book that has at least some equations and algorithms (I get that its not exclusively this) or is it the kind of book that mostly rampages on about Turing's love life and how the crude savages of the era screwed him over? I'm just trying to figure out how soft -n- fluffy it is.

Neither, and therein lies the weakness of this book. This review is spot on. The beginning chapters are all these interesting historical anecdotes that do a pretty good job of contextualizing the disjointed and awkward methods of transmitting and thinking about information in the pre-Shannon era. As a series of lesser-known historical anecdotes, it's quite fascinating to know that Babbage like to crack codes as a hobby and that Shannon and Turing directly influenced each other's work as they had regular lunchtime discussions at Bell labs. That is interesting thread that got me to read the book, it felt like a great set-up to a really interesting and accessible primer to information theory.

But then, once Shannon is introduced, the author seems at a loss to explain what information theory is actually used for other than a vague sentiment that it's "useful everywhere, like in the internets and satellites and stuff". In fact, the narrative seems to fall into the same trap that is described wherein a bunch of non-mathematically inclined "visionaries" from psychologists to linguists and architects all jump on an ill-fated "information theory can explain everything" bandwagon without really understanding what it is that information theory can and can't do, leading to quasi-celebrity status for a (very bewildered) Shannon. This then devolves into an extended discussion of memes from the early work of Dawkins which met a similar fate (the "journal of mimetics" was short-lived due to a complete inability of it's founders to agree on exactly what belonged in it). The treatment of biological information is amazingly scant beyond some re-hashing of Dawkins and Gould, given how fundamental information theory is to the modern field of bioinformatics and the like. It then wraps up with with obligatory creation stories of wikipedia, google and discussions of information glut, the likes of which a slashdot audience would already know by heart and therefore find unenlightening.

The actual information theory examples explained in the book do not go beyond the toy examples from Shannon's paper, which is itself very well written and eminently accessible if you have a little statistics and math background. So if you are looking for that, go straight to the source instead instead of reading this book. If you are looking for some neat historical anecdotes about what people used to do to save money on telegraph messages and dreams that Ada Loveless had about being able to see a new world in her dreams where algorithm developers would someday rule the world, by all means enjoy the first 5 chapters, but the remainder is quite forgettable I'm afraid.

Link to Shannon's 1948 paper ...more "

Jan 04, 2012 01:44PM · see review

Alan is currently reading

Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion

by Alan Burdick (Goodreads Author)

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(page 150 of 340)
"This is a really cool book about ecological invasions, which often have bizarre historical stories attached to them. ." — Dec 13, 2008 08:34PM

May 07, 2010 11:28PM