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James Gleick, the author of the best sellers Chaos and Genius, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: a revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era's defining quality--the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world. The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanishes as soon as it is born. From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long-misunderstood talking drums of Africa, Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness. He provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information: Charles Babbage, the idiosyncratic inventor of the first great mechanical computer; Ada Byron, the brilliant and doomed daughter of the poet, who became the first true programmer; pivotal figures like Samuel Morse and Alan Turing; and Claude Shannon, the creator of information theory itself. And then the information age arrives. Citizens of this world become experts willy-nilly: aficionados of bits and bytes. And we sometimes feel we are drowning, swept by a deluge of signs and signals, news and images, blogs and tweets. The Information is the story of how we got here and where we are heading. From the Hardcover edition.

Product Identifiers

PublisherPenguin Random House Audio Publishing Group

ISBN-100307914968

ISBN-139780307914965

eBay Product ID (ePID)24038296427

Product Key Features

Book TitleInformation : a History, a Theory, a Flood

TopicGeneral, History

Publication Year2011

LanguageEnglish

GenreTechnology & Engineering, Computers, Science

AuthorJames Gleick

FormatCompact Disc

Dimensions

Item Height1.6in.

Item Length5.9in.

Item Width5.1in.

Item Weight13.8 Oz

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

Reviews" Accessible and engrossing." -Library Journal "The author's skills as an interpreter of science shine&for completist cybergeeks and infojunkies, the book delivers a solid summary of a dense, complex subject." -Kirkus "[A] tour de force&This is intellectual history of tremendous verve, insight, and significance. Unfailingly spirited, often poetic, Gleick recharges our astonishment over the complexity and resonance of the digital sphere and ponders our hunger for connectedness&Destined to be a science classic, best-seller Gleick's dynamic history of information will be one of the biggest nonfiction books of the year." Booklist , starred review Praise for James Gleick's Chaos "An awe-inspiring book. Reading it gave me the sensation that someone had just found the light switch." -Douglas Adams "Enthralling. Full of beautifully strange and strangely beautiful ideas." -Douglas Hofstadter Genius "The clearest statement I have seen of the true spirit of science." -Freeman J. Dyson Isaac Newton "A masterpiece." -John Banville "A brilliant and engaging study in the paradoxes of the scientific imagination." -Richard Holmes, " Accessible and engrossing." -Library Journal "The author's skills as an interpreter of science shine&for completist cybergeeks and infojunkies, the book delivers a solid summary of a dense, complex subject." Kirkus From the Hardcover edition.

Dewey Edition22

Number of Volumes14 Vols.

Dewey Decimal020.9

Edition DescriptionUnabridged Edition