The recap
James Gleick sets out to tell the story of information itself, the invisible stuff that, he argues, underlies language, technology and even life. He begins with the talking drums of Africa, which carried intricate messages across long distances, then moves through the invention of writing and alphabets, the making of dictionaries, Charles Babbage's dream of a mechanical computer and Ada Lovelace's insight into what such a machine might do, and on to the telegraph and Morse code. The heart of the book is Claude Shannon, whose information theory showed that messages could be measured in bits regardless of their meaning, an idea now built into every phone and computer. From there Gleick follows the concept into biology and physics, and finally into the overwhelming flood of data we all swim in. Some chapters demand patience, but the reward is a deep sense of how the digital world came to be. It predates the latest wave of artificial intelligence, yet its account of where our data deluge came from remains illuminating.
Why read it
For readers who want the long backstory of the internet age, and for anyone fascinated by codes, computers and the history of ideas.
Fun facts
- 01
It won the 2012 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books, presented by Sir Paul Nurse.
- 02
It also won the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.
- 03
It was a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year.
- 04
Its opening chapter is about African talking drums, a subtle and effective form of long-distance communication that predates writing.
