[LINK] James Gleick on Information

[David Goldstein]

He's also interviewed on Late Night Live tonight (Tuesday).
 
David


----- Original Message -----
> From: Tom Worthington <tom.worthington at tomw.net.au>
> To: Link list <link at anu.edu.au>
> Cc: 
> Sent: Monday, 23 May 2011 7:29 PM
> Subject: [LINK] James Gleick on Information
> 
>G reetings from the Austrlaian National University in Canberra, where 
> author, James Gleick, is talking about his new book "The Information: A 
> History, a Theory, a Flood".
> 
> Mr. Gleick told an anecdote about Zick Rubin having difficulty 
> convincing the authors of a wiki that he was alive. The auditors had a 
> printed book which said he was dead, which was more convincing than the 
> living person.
> 
> Mr. Gleick then mentioned Shannon's paper "A Mathematical Theory of 
> Communication" (1948) which provided a theory of information. He pointed 
> out that Shannon in his youth produced a "barbed wire" communications 
> network.
> 
> It now seems obvious that electrical and optical communicators systems 
> carry information, via electromagnetic information. But this was an idea 
> which needed to be developed.
> 
> Mr. Gleick's gift is to make esoteric theoretical ideas, first chaos 
> theory and now information theory, accessible to a wider audience. 
> Unlike "A Brief History of Time", where Stephen Hawking tries to 
> explain 
> advanced physics (and failed), James Gleick mostly succeeds. His success 
> may be due to the same advice Cameron Chamberlain gave in his 
> Introduction to Animation last week: make it about something alive, with 
> a personality. Facts about things are boring, but stories about people 
> doing things are interesting.
> 
> It is important to realise that great inventions do not spring 
> inevitably from accumulations of information. It takes people with 
> passion. It is curious and informative that information is fundamental 
> to life.
> 
> At question time one of the audience asked about a quote attributed to 
> an Austrlaian about an telephone linked information system predicted in 
> 1948. Mr. Gleick said he doubted that this was said in 1948. I recalled 
> something ike this attributed to Austrlaian computer pioneer, Trevor 
> Pearcey. It took me a few minutes searching to find the reference:
> 
> “in the non-mathematical field there is scope for the use of the 
> [computing] techniques in such things as filing systems. It is not 
> inconceivable that an automatic encyclopaedic service operated through 
> the national teleprinter or telephone service will one day exist.”
> 
> This is attributed to "Pearcey, T.: Modern Trends in Machine 
> Computation. Aust. J. Science X/4 Supp. (1948) in History of Computing: 
> Learning from the Past: IFIP WG 9.7, 2010
> 
> James Gleick is also speaking 24 May at the Brisbane Irish Club.
> 
> ps: The Australian Information Commissioner, Professor John McMillan, 
> will  be launching a new set of "Principles on Open Public Sector 
> Information", at Meta 2011, ANU University House, 25 May 2011.
> 
> More in my blog at: 
> <http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/05/james-gleick-on-information.html>.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
> PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
> Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
> Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
> Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra
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