This paper kickstarted the concept of information theory, and was hugely influential on many fields of research. Signal-to-noise ratio, the bit, information entropy, etc. are all theories and concepts presented by Shannon.
I would like to share with you a few pages from the intro to my thesis which cover Shannon's channel coding theorem. There are some nice TiKZ illustrations. http://minireference.com/static/excerpts/Shannon_channel_cod... (it's not super detailed, but the definitions of all the moving parts are given)
in case somebody is interested in more than the 15 pages provided in the excerpt, here's ivan's complete thesis:
I'm still following quantum information theory research, but more as a spectator from the sidelines. However, a couple of weeks ago I had to come back to quantum info. theory to "defend" my academic reputation. Our colleagues from TIFR found a bug in one of our papers (http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3645v3) so my coauthor and I had to fix it. It was kind of cool to see I hadn't "lost my quantum skills" after two years of running a business. I guess, once you go quantum you never go back? :)
I had the exact same thought in college when I started reading a handful of well-written papers like this myself. This really set a standard that for 60+ years now academia hasn't always maintained.