The Information by James Gleick (@JamesGleick) has gathered a lot of attention, for example here and here. I read it too, here's my review.
With The Information, James Gleick (@JamesGleick) offers a thought provoking overview of the roots and of the inner workings of the information age. He subtitled his book "A History, a Theory, a Flood".
A History
Starting with the analysis of information conveyed with talking drums in Africa, James Gleick (@JamesGleick) outlines the history of information from dictionaries to quantum computing. His profound research and imaginative writing style makes it easy to follow the meandering path of information from its very beginning to the 21st century, passing the Oxford English Dictionary, the telegraph and the differential analyzer.
A Theory
Complementing this dive into history is an overview of the most important concepts of information theory. Ranging from Norbert Wiener's cybernetics - a personal favorite of mine - to Richard Dawkins' (@RichardDawkins) meme - another favorite - and Maxwell's Demon. While the book covers most of the important information theories, it could have been somewhat more detailed here and there at the cost of the historical explanations. But this is just my personal taste.
A Flood
Information theory has stripped meaning from information and left just a series of zeros and ones to be analyzed by mathematicians and computer scientists. But due to the flood of information we are supposed to cope with in our daily life, meaning can no longer be discarded as "irrelevant to the engineering problem". While the book closes with the idea that meaning will find its way back to information theory, the definite answer is still to be found.
The Information is both, a great read for your holidays as well as a reference book for the theory and the history of information. It is an easy read and more of a tale than a science book. Overall, a great companion for your holiday travels.
Currently, I am reading Andrew Grove's classic Only The Paranoid Survive. Follow me on Twitter to know about the book reivew.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Book Review: How the Mind Works
Finally my next book review. It is really a long book, so it took some time :-). It is How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker.
This is probably the definitive book on the computational theory of mind paired with natural selection. Being one of the most eloquent, wittiest and most successful psychologists and neuroscientists of this age, Steven Pinker outlines his thoughts with startling precision and a sense of good humor. Let’s have a look at the two big building blocks of his theory
The Computational Theory of Mind
Information processing is the central activity of our brains. Basically our mind consists of mental representations, which are the symbol representations used by the mind. These representations can in turn be accessed by our thought processes.
Our mental representations are the inscriptions of things, concepts and ideas in our mind. They are connected in our neural network. Different connections use different connection weights. By this mechanism we can determine that a horse, a pig and a bird are all animals but “horse” and “pig” are more strongly connected to each other than to “bird” and they also belong to the mental representation of “mammal”. This is done by simple statistical operations and can be modeled in traditional neural networks. Departing from classical connectionism Steven Pinker further proposes a hierarchical “layer-structure” in our mental representations. This structure allows us to perform difficult tasks such as quantification, recursion or the implementation of fuzzy logic.
Natural Selection
Natural selection is pretty straightforward. Whatever makes a living organism successful at reproducing itself is reproduced the most and is therefore most likely to be found in subsequent generations. As a result, most if not all of the features of our body or mind are here because they have been essential for survival or reproduction to our ancestors. This includes everything from stereo vision to sex drive (which differs from females to males in most species) or family values. Natural selection allows us to explain why the mind works as it does.
The Other 350 Pages
The computational theory of mind and natural selection are just the building blocks of Steven Pinker’s explanation of the human brain. In the rest of the book, he continues to apply these concepts to everything from vision to intelligence, emotions or family values. It is a tremendous read and I can highly recommend it to anyone interested in neuroscience or psychology!
How the mind works was published back in 1999, so it might be that some of its insights are not considered state-of-the-art science anymore. Generally though, the book was able to withstand the test of time and I am not aware of any claims in the book that have been refuted by now.
Currently, I am reading Sartre's Nausea. Follow me on Twitter to hear what I think about it or discuss any other book!
This is probably the definitive book on the computational theory of mind paired with natural selection. Being one of the most eloquent, wittiest and most successful psychologists and neuroscientists of this age, Steven Pinker outlines his thoughts with startling precision and a sense of good humor. Let’s have a look at the two big building blocks of his theory
The Computational Theory of Mind
Information processing is the central activity of our brains. Basically our mind consists of mental representations, which are the symbol representations used by the mind. These representations can in turn be accessed by our thought processes.
Our mental representations are the inscriptions of things, concepts and ideas in our mind. They are connected in our neural network. Different connections use different connection weights. By this mechanism we can determine that a horse, a pig and a bird are all animals but “horse” and “pig” are more strongly connected to each other than to “bird” and they also belong to the mental representation of “mammal”. This is done by simple statistical operations and can be modeled in traditional neural networks. Departing from classical connectionism Steven Pinker further proposes a hierarchical “layer-structure” in our mental representations. This structure allows us to perform difficult tasks such as quantification, recursion or the implementation of fuzzy logic.
Natural Selection
Natural selection is pretty straightforward. Whatever makes a living organism successful at reproducing itself is reproduced the most and is therefore most likely to be found in subsequent generations. As a result, most if not all of the features of our body or mind are here because they have been essential for survival or reproduction to our ancestors. This includes everything from stereo vision to sex drive (which differs from females to males in most species) or family values. Natural selection allows us to explain why the mind works as it does.
The Other 350 Pages
The computational theory of mind and natural selection are just the building blocks of Steven Pinker’s explanation of the human brain. In the rest of the book, he continues to apply these concepts to everything from vision to intelligence, emotions or family values. It is a tremendous read and I can highly recommend it to anyone interested in neuroscience or psychology!
How the mind works was published back in 1999, so it might be that some of its insights are not considered state-of-the-art science anymore. Generally though, the book was able to withstand the test of time and I am not aware of any claims in the book that have been refuted by now.
Currently, I am reading Sartre's Nausea. Follow me on Twitter to hear what I think about it or discuss any other book!
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