Book Review: The Information

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.