[LINK] James Gleick on Information

[Tom Worthington]

Greetings 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