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.
Showing posts with label communication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communication. Show all posts
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
From music to business: How to foster, capture and communicate creativity – Part III
This post is the third of three posts to present some creativity-related beliefs from music and how to transfer them to the world of business. While I am neither a professional musician nor a business consultant or a remarkably creative person these ideas might be inspiring for some of you.
In part I and part II I wrote about how to foster and capture creativity. In this last short post of the series I want to stress the importance of correctly communicating creativity. Noone will care about your life-changing ideas if you they do not understand what you are trying to say.
Communicating Creativity - Translate your ideas into suitable language
Innovative ideas are often not easily explained to other people. If they were, they were most probably not being labeled as "innovative ideas". If you do not want to be ignored or ridiculed as a strange nerd, dreamy fool or incomprehensible stranger you better start communicating your ideas in a langugage that is understood by your audience.
Communicating Creativity in Music
I will never forget when organ player Dennis Montgomery III told drummer Victor Lewis in a jazzaar-project I was playing in: "Hey man, I need that center block country church gospel feel!" Of course noone of the Europeans knew what a center block country church is, let alone how they play gospel music there. Victor however, was right on it. By using an analogy Dennis communicated much more clearly than if he said something like: "Could please give me a snare on three and eights on the hihat?" While of course we were not playing center block country church gospel he could wrap his idea of the tune's groove into highly effective and understandable language. At least for those knowing how gospel music is played in center block country churches :-)
Communicating Creativity in Business
The principle of communicating creativity is the very same in business as it is in music. Before you tell somebody about your new, disruptive, ground-breaking innovation take a minute to reflect on how to sell your idea. Is he a number's guy? - Say something like: "My hypothesis is XY, given that assumption we should change our product to Z, which would cost approximately X." Are you talking to a social media enthusiast? - go with: "Hey, I've seen Foursquare and Gowalla adopting XY. Maybe we should follow the same principle by doing Z". For rather emotional people try: "Hey, I think XY really hurts people's feelings. Shouldn't we change it to Z?" You want to sell your idea to a consultant? - Better say nothing at all and prepare some slides instead.
What do you think of this post? Write a comment!
I do not yet know the topic of my next post. Please drop by in a week or follow me on Twitter!
In part I and part II I wrote about how to foster and capture creativity. In this last short post of the series I want to stress the importance of correctly communicating creativity. Noone will care about your life-changing ideas if you they do not understand what you are trying to say.
Communicating Creativity - Translate your ideas into suitable language
Innovative ideas are often not easily explained to other people. If they were, they were most probably not being labeled as "innovative ideas". If you do not want to be ignored or ridiculed as a strange nerd, dreamy fool or incomprehensible stranger you better start communicating your ideas in a langugage that is understood by your audience.
Communicating Creativity in Music
I will never forget when organ player Dennis Montgomery III told drummer Victor Lewis in a jazzaar-project I was playing in: "Hey man, I need that center block country church gospel feel!" Of course noone of the Europeans knew what a center block country church is, let alone how they play gospel music there. Victor however, was right on it. By using an analogy Dennis communicated much more clearly than if he said something like: "Could please give me a snare on three and eights on the hihat?" While of course we were not playing center block country church gospel he could wrap his idea of the tune's groove into highly effective and understandable language. At least for those knowing how gospel music is played in center block country churches :-)
Communicating Creativity in Business
The principle of communicating creativity is the very same in business as it is in music. Before you tell somebody about your new, disruptive, ground-breaking innovation take a minute to reflect on how to sell your idea. Is he a number's guy? - Say something like: "My hypothesis is XY, given that assumption we should change our product to Z, which would cost approximately X." Are you talking to a social media enthusiast? - go with: "Hey, I've seen Foursquare and Gowalla adopting XY. Maybe we should follow the same principle by doing Z". For rather emotional people try: "Hey, I think XY really hurts people's feelings. Shouldn't we change it to Z?" You want to sell your idea to a consultant? - Better say nothing at all and prepare some slides instead.
What do you think of this post? Write a comment!
I do not yet know the topic of my next post. Please drop by in a week or follow me on Twitter!
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