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Gleick's new book on information theory

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64 pointsisomorph25 comments

I'm reading "The Information" right now.

Gleick's book takes a wide and multidisciplinary view of information. It traces our history through the lens of information and then turns to examine the cultural impact of Shannon's work. It's fascinating how the formalization of information just 60 years ago has so deeply impacted our world.

The prologue about Shannon's time at Bell Labs is an elegant, even beautiful, exposition of information theory's importance. As introductions go, I'd rank it up there with the introductions to Will Durant's "Story of Philosophy"[1] or Andrew Steane's "Quantum Computing" [2].

So far, at least, "The Information" hasn't dug into the technical details of information theory. That's probably fine and does not appear to be Gleick's intent.

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[1] http://www.amazon.com/Story-Philosophy-Opinions-Greatest-Phi...

[2] http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9708022

Kevin Kelly interviewed Gleick about the book in last month's Wired:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/mf_gleick_qa/all/1

Kelly: The extreme view would be that all these bits that make up atoms are running on a very big computer called the universe, an idea first espoused by Babbage.

Gleick: That makes sense as long as this metaphor does not diminish our sense of what the universe is but expands our sense of what a computer is.

Kelly: But as you note, some scientists say that this is not a metaphor: The universe we know is only information.

Gleick: I’m not a physicist, but that concept resonates with something that we all recognize: Information is the thing that we care most about. The more we understand the role that information plays in our world, the more skillful citizens we will be.

And it was only after the invention of the telegraph that we understood that our nerves carry messages, just like wires. When we look back through history, we can see that a lot of different stories all turn out to be stories about information.

It's these kind of statements that drive me nuts about Gleick. If you don't pay much attention, it almost sounds profound. But when you examine it, you realize the statement is almost devoid of meaning.

And, to top it off, he gets the facts wrong, and implies a causal relation when there is none to be found. Galvani did experments on the muscles of frogs in 1791, and proved that electrical impulses could animate movement. The telegraph invention came several decades later.

I just get the feeling Gleick doesn't really understand what he's writing about, or dumbs it down so much for a lay audience that the facts get mangled.

Sounds like the problem people sometimes have with Malcolm Gladwell.

> Galvani did experiments on the muscles of frogs in 1791, and proved that electrical impulses could animate movement.

Galvani show us that there is something, but it was only after the invention of telegraph that we understand, that it's information, what's transferred on nerves.

But there is no evidence to show any sort of causal cross over between the two. You can wave your hands, and say that "obviously" people didn't understand X until we had Y - but there is no historical reference being made to support this claim. Gleick just throws it out because it "sounds right" to him (and us) given our current historical context.

A popular science writer is not a trained historian or academic; but I do think readers of this genre deserve a level of journalistic integrity and depth that is missing here (note: I've NOT read The Information - and am basing my opinion on Gleick's past work and a recent interview about the book).

Cool - I just bought it for my Kindle. Gleick is a master of digging into some interesting branch of science and how it affects society. In the 1980s, I added Common Lisp chaos theory examples to my first Springer Verlag book, inspired by his wonderful book Chaos. I can't wait to savor the new book.

Why did you find Chaos to be wonderful? I found many inaccuracies when I read it. Seemed more like a fluff piece designed to ride a popular wave about the topic at the time it came out.

For me, perhaps it was my ignorance of the subject that both made me miss the book's inadequacies and made it seem wonderful to me. The concepts were new to me and were counter-intuitive in a mentally liberating way. It was also during a zeitgeist that produced books like The Tao of Physics.

A fair question but since I read the book back in 1988 all I can say from memory was that it got me excited about the field, using IFS, etc.

Do you always eat only the finest meals, freshly prepared, with only the highest-quality meats and produce?

Sometimes an In-n-Out burger can be "wonderful".

I, too, enjoyed Chaos. Regardless of its inaccuracies -- wherever they are -- it presents the topic very well, introducing it without being dry or unreadable. It held my attention throughout the book, and I still remember specific parts of it. I wouldn't mind reading it again, either.

Books, like business, can have different markets and do different things well. I think what Gleick lacks in writing a textbook, he makes up for in approachability.

Fair enough. I was just a bit surprised by the effusive comments on this thread when my experience was quite the opposite.

For my money, I've much more enjoyed the writings of Martin Gardner, or Bill Bryson.

if you like gardner and bryson, you should like ian stewart too

I worked in the non-linear dynamics field for a few years and was never impressed by Gleick's book on Chaos. Maybe this one is better ...

If you haven't also worked in information theory, you're probably going to like it better...

I'm curious if you liked Lorenz's book more (The Essence of Chaos).

As someone woefully unqualified to critique either, I'd be interested in the opinion of someone closer to the subject matter.

I'd be interested in any recommendations you have for books about chaos/non-linear systems. I read Chaos in high school and it was a starting point for me to later explore fractals, IFSs, and attractors. My math skills were never good enough to study dynamic systems in college, but I still enjoyed learning about it at some level.

Since I've read several of Shannon's papers and other mathematical treatments of information theory (e.g. Kullback), I suspect this book will not shed additional technical light for me. However I can't deny that Gleick's writing has an inspirational quality to it that is engaging, as long as you are not reading it as a scientific treatment. I also read Genius and I understand why Gleick is considered almost along the lines of nonfiction fanfic.

> I'd be interested in any recommendations you have for books about chaos/non-linear systems

Strogatz's Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos might be a good place to start. It's not mathematically sophisticated at all, e.g. there are few proofs and topological methods are at best implicitly present; but it still has some real mathematical meat on it.

Enjoying reading the book so far, but also worth checking out, and what turned me on to it in the first place, is Freeman Dyson's review in NY Books.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/mar/10/how-we-...

I'm just on page 4 of 426 and I've already got an intellectual boner for this book. Gleick's Chaos (technically perfect or not) was a huge revelation for me and gave me a truckload of rich metaphors to better understand the world. I'm expecting the same from The Information. AT&T in 1950 sounds a lot like Google. "[It] did not demand instant gratification from its research division."

Also the author of "Chaos: Making a New Science"

Gleick is also the author of a very interesting biography of Richard Feynman, the book Genius.

http://www.amazon.com/Genius-Life-Science-Richard-Feynman/dp...

I didn't like Chaos or Feynman - and haven't read Gleick since. I find his type of popular science writing to be imprecise and even inaccurate.

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