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Comment by afkqs | Hacker News Reader

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afkqs·

Any good book recommendations on Shannon or the history of the information theory?

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Don't miss the original:

"The Mathematical Theory of Communication"

It's a surprisingly readable small paperback book. It's not a hard read if you have some familiarity with the basics of information theory. There aren't a crazy amount of equations or anything.

https://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Theory-Communication-Cla...

Fun fact: Claude Shannon tinkered in artificial intelligence and board games back in the day. He built many devices to play against human players, and one to play against another machine.

https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/143233/claude-shannon-man...

on that subject, the "mind-reading machine": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23472183

A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age and The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood.

"A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age" is very good.

Didn't rate it. Seems as if Shannon did not have book worthy doings after the age of 30 or so

I enjoyed 'The Information' by James Gleick.

I second The Information. A Mind at Play was interesting but a lot of it was about Shannon as a person, and while that was interesting, The Information went a lot deeper into the history of 'information'. I also feel it was much better written.

The Idea Factory is a good intro.

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