The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

James Gleick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2011

James Gleick, the author of the best sellers Chaos and Genius, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: a revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era’s defining quality—the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world.
 
The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanishes as soon as it is born. From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long-misunderstood talking drums of Africa, Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness. He provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information: Charles Babbage, the idiosyncratic inventor of the first great mechanical computer; Ada Byron, the brilliant and doomed daughter of the poet, who became the first true programmer; pivotal figures like Samuel Morse and Alan Turing; and Claude Shannon, the creator of information theory itself.
 
And then the information age arrives. Citizens of this world become experts willy-nilly: aficionados of bits and bytes. And we sometimes feel we are drowning, swept by a deluge of signs and signals, news and images, blogs and tweets. The Information is the story of how we got here and where we are heading.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2011: In a sense, The Information is a book about everything, from words themselves to talking drums, writing and lexicography, early attempts at an analytical engine, the telegraph and telephone, ENIAC, and the ubiquitous computers that followed. But that's just the "History." The "Theory" focuses on such 20th-century notables as Claude Shannon, Norbert Wiener, Alan Turing, and others who worked on coding, decoding, and re-coding both the meaning and the myriad messages transmitted via the media of their times. In the "Flood," Gleick explains genetics as biology's mechanism for informational exchange--Is a chicken just an egg's way of making another egg?--and discusses self-replicating memes (ideas as different as earworms and racism) as information's own evolving meta-life forms. Along the way, readers learn about music and quantum mechanics, why forgetting takes work, the meaning of an "interesting number," and why "[t]he bit is the ultimate unsplittable particle." What results is a visceral sense of information's contemporary precedence as a way of understanding the world, a physical/symbolic palimpsest of self-propelled exchange, the universe itself as the ultimate analytical engine. If Borges's "Library of Babel" is literature's iconic cautionary tale about the extreme of informational overload, Gleick sees the opposite, the world as an endlessly unfolding opportunity in which "creatures of the information" may just recognize themselves. --Jason Kirk

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In 1948, Bell Laboratories announced the invention of the electronic semiconductor and its revolutionary ability to do anything a vacuum tube could do but more efficiently. While the revolution in communications was taking these steps, Bell Labs scientist Claude Shannon helped to write a monograph for them, A Mathematical Theory of Communication, in which he coined the word bit to name a fundamental unit of computer information. As bestselling author Gleick (Chaos) astutely argues, Shannon's neologism profoundly changed our view of the world; his brilliant work introduced us to the notion that a tiny piece of hardware could transmit messages that contained meaning and that a physical unit, a bit, could measure a quality as elusive as information. Shannon's story is only one of many in this sprawling history of information. With his brilliant ability to synthesize mounds of details and to tell rich stories, Gleick leads us on a journey from one form of communicating information to another, beginning with African tribes' use of drums and including along the way scientists like Samuel B. Morse, who invented the telegraph; Norbert Wiener, who developed cybernetics; and Ada Byron, the great Romantic poet's daughter, who collaborated with Charles Babbage in developing the first mechanical computer. Gleick's exceptional history of culture concludes that information is indeed the blood, the fuel, and the vital principle on which our world runs. (Apr.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (March 1, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375423729
• ISBN-13: 978-0375423727
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 1.9 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (98 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,339 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #3 in Books > Computers & Technology > Business & Culture > History
  • #4 in Books > Computers & Technology > Computer Science > Information Theory
  • #22 in Books > Science & Math > Technology

More About the Author

James Gleick's forthcoming book is The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood.

His home page is at http://around.com, and there is a Facebook page at http://facebook.com/J.Gleick.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

217 of 231 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars History & Explanation of "Information" With Biographies, February 2, 2011

By 

Ira Laefsky "Ira Laefsky" (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (Hardcover)

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James Gleick, a prominent journalist, biographer of scientists and explainer of physics has usefully turned his attention to the single most important phenomena of the twenty-first century, the study and quantification of information. This book explains, provides a historical context and gives biographies of the most important explorers of information phenomena throughout the centuries. Gleick provides biographical sketches of lesser known figures in the history of information such as Robert Caudrey compiler of the first known English dictionary and John F. Carrington chronicler of "The Talking Drums of Africa"; he (Gleick) gives fuller personal histories of Samuel F. Morse, Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace; Gleick reserves the most extensive biographical treatment for those who "mathematized" the phenomena of information: Claude Shannon and Alan Turing.

Gleick, a science journalist and chronicler of physics provides interesting background material and simple enough explanations for anyone who wishes to learn about the areas of information theory that influence our times, technologies and businesses. He also gives enough detail for the interested undergraduate student whose field is not primarily in the sciences. But, the unification of science, phenomena, history and biography is also of considerable interest to those like myself who have extensive training in the "information sciences" but seek a wider context for their previously acquired knowledge.

One slight criticism, I have for this otherwise excellent and comprehensive review of the theory of information and its history, is in the area of its relation to physics and the structure of the world (universe). The relationship and application of information theory to physical phenomena is a theory first espoused by Konrad Zuse, a German computer pioneer and Edward Fredkin the proponent of "digital physics". Given that Gleick's attraction and interest for information theory was probably sparked by his study of the history and explanation of physical phenomena, and his penchant for biography I would have expected more background on these explorers of the nature of physical reality as information.

This excellent history of "information science" is a must read for all who seek to understand the phenomena and technologies of the coming century.

--Ira Laefsky, MSE/MBA
Information Technology Consultant and Researcher
Formerly on the Senior Technical Staff of Arthur D. Little, Inc and Digital Equipment Corporation

169 of 181 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating History of Information Technology, February 14, 2011

By 

Michael L. Shakespeare (Kansas City, MO USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (Hardcover)

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Where did the telegraph, telephone and computers come from anyway? Author James Gleick's new book, "The Information" sheds light inside the black box.

In a revealing work, backed by painstaking research, James Gleick, has combed the archives to show us some absorbing details and insights on how the structure of information progressed from clay tablets to telegraph to cloud technology.

This is a hefty book, but its theme can be shortly stated. Mr. Gleick believes "in the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of itself."

Context can be everything in historical interpretation, as James Gleick makes clear in his convincing prolog that "the alphabet was a founding technology of information; the telephone, the fax machine, the calculator and, ultimately the computer are only the latest innovations devised for saving, manipulating, and communicating knowledge." Mr. Gleick's narrative builds into a fulfilling and thought-provoking story.

The author begins with the amazing tale of how African drums communicated, then shifts to Robert Cawdrey's "Table Alphabeticall in 1604. He shows us how time and space are minimized and global consciousness realized.

At more than 500 pages, with few illustrations, this book looks terrifying. But the pages dissolve quickly as Mr. Gleick introduces us to a range of vivid characters, such as colorful Charles Babbage, the inventor of the ever growing difference machine in 1822.

After twenty years of development it weighed 15 tons with over 25,000 precision parts. But by 1842 the British government had grown weary of Babbage's pork barrel project. "What shall we do to get rid of Mr. Babbage and his calculating machine?" asked Prime Minister Robert Peel. "Surely if completed it would be worthless as far as science is concerned... It will be in my opinion a very costly toy."

But another fascinating part of the story, of course, is of the strange men, and the strange world they inhabited at Bell Laboratories, doing research on code breaking and anti-aircraft gun control during World War II. There was ego and rivalry and brilliance aplenty in those days. We meet Alan Turing, and brillant oddballs like Norbert Weiner and Claude Shannon, who were brought in from other institutions, to imagine and to challenge each other.

This is a book full of great details, like Richard Dawkins's memes: ideas, tunes, catch phases and images that "propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain" through imitation. Claude Chappe's vast network of optical telegraph towers transferring messages by semaphore across revolutionary France in twelve minutes. And an amazing robot mouse developed by the inventor of information theory, Claude Shannon, that could learn to flawlessly navigate a maze back in 1950.

Some of the narrative may seem pretty heavy- going. For readers who are not versed in the subject, it may seem to be almost impenetrable. After a bit, one realizes this book is not written for the general reader.

Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with a scholarly conversation and nothing wrong with a book that assumes its readers will already know something about computer science. As a book for specialists this has its pleasures, from Mr. Gleick's learned discussion of boolean algebra to the German ENIGMA code machine in World War II and the workings of a telephone switchboard invented by the George W. McCoy, the world's first telephone operator.

Mr. Gleick's affection for his subject is so complete -- and completely convincing -- his style is so modest and his research is so thorough that "The Information" manages to be engaging, instructive and thought-provoking, all at once.

Scientific work may not be very glamorous, but "The Information" shows that it can be vitally important, and also surprisingly amusing.

The author could easily have written a fine book focused more narrowly on the development of computers. Mr. Gleick is the kind of historian who excels at showing how everything is connected. He tells us, "hardly any information technology goes obsolete. each new one throws its predecessors into relief." In this investigation, few books could provide a surer guide.

Mr. Gleick is familiar with the vast number of written sources. This book is clearly not intended to be the last word on information technology. But for any readers wanting a learned, entertaining and lucid introduction to a notoriously complex subject, it should certainly be their first.

257 of 297 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 1,729 put that in your pipe and smoke it., February 16, 2011

By 

Aceto "All knowledge is sorrow." (Meilhan Sur Garonne) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (Hardcover)

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James Gleick is in that tiny top tier of science and technology authors who work slowly, quietly and painstakingly to help us understand things both difficult and important. He does not spend his time dancing for the media. He does not toss off books on a set schedule while Gladwellhanding on tour for books with titles like "Burp!" And he is stylist enough to present the context of the human, the social. His works on chaos and on Feynman are bright treasure with a touch of fun.

Right out of the gate, Mr. Gleick introduces Claude Shannon. In the same year Bell Labs came out with the transistor, Shannon (of said lab) gave new meaning to an ancient word, "bit". Shannon, rare bird of a technologist and mathematician, was consumed by messages and their meaning, i.e. information content. He wanted to do for information what Newton (another Gleick tome) had done for force, mass and motion. He set about integrating information into science and mathematics, abstracting theory and structure. The BIG difference between Shannon and Newton is that mechanics were to be immutable yardsticks of the universe. Information was forged in the souls of its millions of creators. It was shaped by heartbeats, circuits, character sets and symbols. Encoding takes many forms and flourishes whether the slip of a slide rule or a slide trombone. It does not stay put and jumps from logical to physical and back again, but wearing different clothes. Astounded within pages, I buckled my academic seatbelt.

Then back he leaps to the Homeric, the African where poetry around fires and where thrumming drums could repeat and relay messages across generations or across a hundred miles in an hour. It would take millennia before they were shunted, transformed and abstracted, losing their essential character. It would take alphabet and electricity, before quantity, frequency, speed and duration would magnify an order or two each of magnitude and of scope.

For us the danger of the drums stopping is the threat of a bass solo. For Africa it would have been like cable going dark. What Africa had was a language family that was not alphabet centric. The Indo-European family gradually abstracted tone from language and tried to lash it to music (though words muscled in anyway). So we had to wait for a Morse to encode words into electric pulses. Alphabet was the intermediary between existing words and a code. Mr. Gleick takes us through some of the ideas and the details showing the complexity, power and beauty of drum language. Such is the heavy lifting we are paying this kind of author to do for us.

Yet even in telegraphy, the mind/body problem seeps in. Keyers could distinguish each other by hearing, nay feeling their personal touch. Imposter agents were discovered just this way during wars. A different layer of information was riding the dits and dots. Another meta construction was to match the most used letters and combinations with the simplest strokes, saving untold millions of taps. We did just the reverse with the Qwerty keyboard, designed to maximize the finger distance across keys to stop the hammers jamming. Now the mechanical is gone, but we cling to the slowest keyboard possible.

Mr. Gleick achieves fresh and deep insight by not looking at the past merely in terms of the present, e.g. a horse is a car without tires. Historians fall into this error; politicians do it to disinform, distort and distract. Instead, he trots out the great and forgotten Fr. Ong, S.J. along with Marshall Mcluhan to testify how those involved in the creation thought and wished. And he is guru enough (slayer of darkness) to describe the spread of alphabet as viral: "The alphabet spread by contagion." Brilliant illumination.

As he traces these metamorphoses, it is the meta layer that he focuses his beam upon. He shows us the how of building the philosophy and the technology of abstraction. One of the oldest recordings I have heard is of oral tradition poetry, an epic recited from memory thousands of lines long. The integrity of the replication was achieved partially from phrasing (wine dark sea) but mostly from sound itself, tone and meter. It was fast, driving and percussive, the antithesis of beat culture café recitation. Clay tablets, papyrus and parchment were a long way off to serve as a new abstraction of meaning from sound. Ever hear somebody babble that pseudo distinction "written AND verbal" ? They mean written and spoken. The distinction opposing verbal is symbolic, not written. When you confuse, you lose.

We tour the interplay of symbol, alphabet and counting marks into words, logic and mathematics. Mr. Gleick has just the right touch of detail to let us touch and feel, to play with his revelations, not just gliding over them, assuming we get it. We spend that extra minute on each example, like having a little Newton on our shoulder.

This book is not simply a history. I learned some history, but as a side dish. It is about, as the title says so neatly, The Information. One of the meta threads traced is the interplay of information with sheer physicality. The drums - their constituent materials and their medium produce together sound waves. Yet the same physicality that propels this information also exhausts it in volume, frequency and distance. Then it is a convergence of succeeding waves that moves forward. Babbage's calculating machine (he a charter member of the Philosophical Breakfast Club) propels by wheels, gears and cranks until the limits of brass are exhausted. We meet Lady Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess (what a natural pun about numbers) Lovelace. She is another almost forgotten genius of information, immortalized at least by programmers in their eponymous language, Ada.

So on to electricity. Mr. Gleick treats telegraph, telephone and television all as stepping stones leading us into the flood, as his subtitle suggests. Even now we are bumping up against the limits of electricity in speed and heat, at least in the materials that shape and carry it through chips and wires. When ENIAC first needed chilled water to cool its vacuum tubes we knew new limits. Whither computing? Organic computers. Physicality again. The quantum computer.

Concurrently we pursue the self correcting system and the self adapting system. As Turing asked nobody in particular, "Can machines think?" Now we hit new limits of the logical kind. Godel and his incompleteness theory snarl new knots. We are quoted Watson "Thought interferes with the probability of events, and, in the long run, with entropy." Salvation is thus yoked to damnation and I think Gleick is Faust.

Break your head on this brave book. Find your limits, as Einstein told us to do, so that we may thus overcome them. In a world of swirling negatives, find some informative energy and bathe in endorphins.

For those of you who appreciate a well made book, this one is set in a lovely and effect variant of Garamond of the 16th century, in turn based upon the Venetian models as published by Geoffrey Torey. This font is made modern as "Adobe Garamond" by Robert Simbach. Everything old is new again.