Reddit reviews The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood
We found 33 Reddit comments about The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Vintage Books
Yes and no. If you're asking these questions you'll probably be very interested in Claude Shannon's work. Take a read of his seminal information theory paper: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf
For an easy read and a fun intro take a look at "The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood":
https://www.amazon.com/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/1400096235/
This is a little less scholarly and a little more geared towards history, but it's a fascinating read and one of the best books I've read in the last couple of years. It doesn't start with Claude Shannon, but rather with different ways that human beings have disseminated information to each other (talking drums, the telegram, etc), over the years. Definitely, after you're done with everything else, put this on your list, it's great.
Edit: Apparently I forgot the link. http://www.amazon.com/The-Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/1400096235
A couple of these have been mentioned already:
[Note: Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an overbearing, insufferable egotist, but he says very interesting things, and I think his books are worth reading. I think he had an AMA on Reddit not too long ago.]
Somewhat related, you might also consider The Information, by James Gleick. It pays to know something about the where and how the raw material of statistics.
I've posted this before but I'll repost it here:
Now in terms of the question that you ask in the title - this is what I recommend:
Job Interview Prep
Junior Software Engineer Reading List
Read This First
Fundementals
Understanding Professional Software Environments
Mentality
History
Mid Level Software Engineer Reading List
Read This First
Fundementals
Software Design
Software Engineering Skill Sets
Databases
User Experience
Mentality
History
Specialist Skills
In spite of the fact that many of these won't apply to your specific job I still recommend reading them for the insight, they'll give you into programming language and technology design.
Not exactly hardware focused, but I really enjoyed Gleick's "The Information, A History, A theory, A flood"
http://www.amazon.com/The-Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/1400096235/
It does a great job of looking at computing in terms of information and its history. I loved the look at prominent figures like Babbage, Lovelace, Turing, etc.
I read books 4-6 of the Dresden Files. I blame Patrick Rothfuss for getting me started and duckie for keeping me going. Coupla assholes. After I finish the other 8 books, I have some nice, solid non-fiction lined up.
In no particular order, I'm going to read:
The Information by James Gleick
The Better Angels Of Our Nature by Steven Pinker
The Math Book by Clifford A. Pickover
The Know-It-All by A.J.
CoastieJacobsAnd others. I'm gonna nerd out so hard that I'll regrow my virginity.
In a way more general approach (and in my view), information is surprise. Anything else is just already known data presented in a certain way. I recommend The information by James Gleick for a detailed (and philosophical) analysis of this question.
Love stuff like this and this.
The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400096235/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_dZ3ozb100CF8D
You should organize it by tech. Remember that numbers are tools. You're going to end up talking about what they were for more than the maths. Navigation, architecture, calendars, all of those would develop at different rates in a civilization and have math supporting it.
Just as two examples:
The beginning of basic numbers as a system would have been merchants and people accounting for debt/business transactions. There were a lot of mechanisms for doing this in early civilization via the temples, tribes, or governments. For details on that you should check out Debt: The First 5000 Years.
Computers are a different branch that deal with information transmission. James Gleick's outstanding book The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood is a concise history of how we go from drum codes in the Congo to the Difference Engine to Turing's computer language.
You should check out this book called The Information. it talks about information theory and how all material interactions are really just transferring information in the form of momentum and spin.
While I was hallucinating on 2C-E, after reading about schroedinger's cat, I had actually theorized that quantum interactions are, at a base level, information transfer. It was interesting to see that come up in a book way after I had thought of it.
/boast
alan turing? If you don't know who he is, you need to.
start with The Information, a tremendous historical which he is featured in
The Annotated Turing is fantastic! Also check out Turing's Cathedral for some insight into how his 1936 paper influenced computing into the next few decades and The Essential Turing to read Turing in his own words.
For a look at how Turing influenced information theory (and a fascinating general introduction to its history), check out The Information.
The Collapse of Complex Societies
War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires
Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall
Genes, Peoples, and Languages
The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood
For a historical and theoretical overview that doesn't get too technical but is still comprehensive and fun to read, I highly recommend The Information by James Gleick. If you dig Zero, I think you'd dig this.
you must be referring to this book; you seem to have forgotten to include a link (or the name) to the book you're referring to
My favorite relaxing math book was Chaos, Making a New Science by James Gleick
And The Information by James Gleick Was pretty good too.
The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood
Thanks for the upvote. Have one from my side too. :-)
But that certainly isn't a semaphore station but indeed a windmill.
Semaphores and semaphore stations became somewhat popular starting from the end of the 18th century. The Ruisdael-painting dates from halfway the 17th century.
Furthermore (Chappe) semaphores had 2 arms, with 1 articulation each. The Ruisdael windmill clearly has 4 blades or sails.
If you want to learn some more about semaphores and sempahore stations there's an insightful chapter on that subject in James Gleick's book The Information.
Please read this:
The Information
It will resolve your question.
https://www.amazon.com/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/1400096235
The Information
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick.
Yeah it was great. Alan turning was a genius.
One of my favorite books about information theory and entropy for all the nerds out there:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/1400096235
James Gleick- The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood.
I really enjoyed Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder and also Chaos and The Information by James Gleick.
To anyone interested in reading about this stuff, I'd very highly recommend "The Information" by James Gleick. It's probably my second favorite book and discusses information starting with African tribal villages sending messages with drums, going through to the telegraph, Shannon's creation of Information Theory, etc. A decent amount of the book is dedicated to Shannon and it's generally a great read.
It's a good time for history of computer science books. We had Gleick's The Information last year, and George Dyson (Freeman's son) just published Turing's Cathedral.
> What I don't see is why this distinction is particularly relevant to the point that information is a particular arrangement of matter and energy, as opposed to a third fundamental component of the universe...
You need matter and/or energy for information to be encoded, but it is something separate from any particular arrangement of matter and energy. The same information can be encoded in many different ways, and it is still the same information. Beethoven's 9th symphony is still Beethoven's 9th symphony whether it is encoded in pits burnt on a CD with a laser, an MP3 file stored on my hard drive, or a book of sheet music.
I recommend reading The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick for an introduction to history of information theory as a science.
I would recommend a couple of books:
Thinking: Fast and Slow https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555/
The Information https://www.amazon.com/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/1400096235
http://www.amazon.com/The-Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/1400096235
I don't remember the details. But I do remember that this book goes into a bit of detail on how communication through the drums occurs.
https://www.amazon.com/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/1400096235
But you did memorize something to do all those actions. Verbatim is not always necessary for proficiency but we should strive for that whenever ritual is concerned to avoid unintentional changes. The language we use does hint at all kinds of things. Changing a preposition could change meaning and disrupt a series of connections. If you want a more in depth rational for why I say memorization is important I suggest The Information by Gleick.