I was lucky to take a grad-level math course in error correcting codes from Dr. Andrew Odlyzko, the author of the essay.

I read a lot of his papers ( http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/ ) in the hopes that I would learn something to improve my exam scores, but he has a knack for asking questions so fundamental that they have almost never even been properly formulated before.

If you have some time, I recommend reading a few of his papers. He completely changed my view of mathematics.