The Information
A History, a Theory, a Flood
by James Gleick
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From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long misunderstood "talking drums" of Africa, James Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness. He also provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information, including Charles Babbage, Ada Byron, Samuel Morse, Alan Turing, and Claude Shannon.
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History, Information science, Information society, Long Now Manual for Civilization, Information, Informationssamhället, Informations- und Dokumentationswissenschaft, Informationsgesellschaft, Historia, Informationsvetenskap, Kommunikation, Kultur, Information theory, Information technology, nyt:e-book-nonfiction=2011-03-20, New York Times bestseller, New York Times reviewed, Communication and technology, Information superhighway, Communication, Société informatisée, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES, Library & Information Science, General, INFORMATION SOCIETY, INFORMATION THEORY, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, HISTORY, Information ScienceShowing 2 featured editions. View all 13 editions?
| Edition | Availability |
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1
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
2011, Pantheon Books
in English
0375423729 9780375423727
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2
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
2011, Knopf Doubleday Pub. Group
electronic resource :
in English
- v3.1
0307379574 9780307379573
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
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The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood begins with the tale of colonial European explorers and their fascination with African talking drums and their observed use to send complex and widely understood messages back and forth between villages far apart, and over even longer distances by relay. The book then covers informational implications of technologies from drum signaling to the long distance telephone.
Starting with symbolic written language, The Information examines the history of intellectual insights central to the development of information theory, detailing key figures responsible such as Claude Shannon, Charles Babbage, Ada Byron, Samuel Morse, Alan Turing, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins and John Archibald Wheeler.
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- Created July 30, 2014
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| December 16, 2022 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
| April 26, 2021 | Edited by Brittany Bunk | Edited without comment. |
| April 26, 2021 | Edited by Brittany Bunk | Added new cover |
| May 17, 2020 | Edited by CoverBot | Added new cover |
| July 30, 2014 | Created by ImportBot | Imported from Internet Archive item record. |