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A thermodynamic reset
Aug. 26th, 2018 04:46 pmBook Review: The Information - A History, a Theory, a Flood, by James Gleick
Most often, the work book sale contains new releases, but sometimes there are older titles too, either because a publisher has a new up-and-coming reissue, or possibly just because they were discovered down the back of the sofa. Either way, this one emerged and despite my disappointment at Time Travel, I decided to persevere.
In fact this is a much better book, covering a difficult and enigmatic subject with clear examples, whether it's the redundancy of repeated information in African drums, Babbage's engines, Maxwell's demon, or the fall from Netwonian and Laplacian determinism to quantum mechanics, Gödel and Turing. The theme of the book is the development of Shannon's information theory, but it casts widely in order to do so, carefully circumscribing the technical meaning of "information" to avoid doubt with its more everyday usage. Gleick strives to be inclusive, so there is discussion along the way on topics such as the OED, philosophy about daugerrotypes, genes, memes, and Wikipedia.
Most often, the work book sale contains new releases, but sometimes there are older titles too, either because a publisher has a new up-and-coming reissue, or possibly just because they were discovered down the back of the sofa. Either way, this one emerged and despite my disappointment at Time Travel, I decided to persevere.
In fact this is a much better book, covering a difficult and enigmatic subject with clear examples, whether it's the redundancy of repeated information in African drums, Babbage's engines, Maxwell's demon, or the fall from Netwonian and Laplacian determinism to quantum mechanics, Gödel and Turing. The theme of the book is the development of Shannon's information theory, but it casts widely in order to do so, carefully circumscribing the technical meaning of "information" to avoid doubt with its more everyday usage. Gleick strives to be inclusive, so there is discussion along the way on topics such as the OED, philosophy about daugerrotypes, genes, memes, and Wikipedia.