Gleick Prologue
Transistor
Claude Shannon (1916-2001)
• Working for Bell Labs
• Had bigger concerns about the electronic/information age
• What exactly were they making? And how to measure it?
o ‘The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point
either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently
the messages have meaning.’
o Shannon came up with a “bit.” “A unit for measuring information.”
A Theory of Information
• The growth of electronic info meant that Claude Shannon needed a way to understand
info and systems for the transmission of intelligence
• Shannon – Weaver model of communication (look it up)
• Once we had the bit, it became clear that information was integral to everything else
o Now we’re dealing with TMI; we compress it, stream it, sort it, match it, filter it.
But how can we make sense of it?
Gliek Chapter 15
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