#4 in Information theory books
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Reddit mentions of The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
Sentiment score: 8
Reddit mentions: 10
We found 10 Reddit mentions of The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. Here are the top ones.
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From theory to the flood
Specs:
| Height | 9.66 Inches |
| Length | 6.74 Inches |
| Number of items | 1 |
| Release date | March 2011 |
| Weight | 2.22 Pounds |
| Width | 1.85 Inches |
Morse code does take character frequency into account, it just doesn't do so perfectly.
>In the name of speed, Morse and Vail had realized that they could
save strokes by reserving the shorter sequences of dots and dashes for the
most common letters. But which letters would be used most often? Little
was known about the alphabet’s statistics. In search of data on the letters’
relative frequencies, Vail was inspired to visit the local newspaper office
in Morristown, New Jersey, and look over the type cases.
He found a stock of twelve thousand E’s, nine thousand T’s, and only two hundred
Z’s. He and Morse rearranged the alphabet accordingly. They had
originally used dash-dash-dot to represent T, the second most common letter; now
they promoted T to a single dash, thus saving telegraph
operators uncountable billions of key taps in the world to come. Long
afterward, information theorists calculated that they had come within 15
percent of an optimal arrangement for telegraphing English text.
Source: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, by James Gleick
Have you seen their Highlights for High School feature?
Also, there are sites like Academic Earth that might be useful.
Here are a few blogs with potential. You'll have to decide for yourself if they have inappropriate content.
Here are a few book recommendations covering various fields, in no particular order (though they should all read #1):
And here's a video interview with Richard Feynman they might enjoy.
Another relevant wiki for you to consider. Many modern theorists dispute the strong Whorfian hypothesis, where language strictly precedes thought.
I'd also recommend The Information as an interesting exploration of the history of human intelligence.
I didn't see this listed yet, The Information. Some of the science/math is a bit more intensive, but it still has that great conversational tone, biographical strands, and is very interesting.
According to Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick (which seems to have gotten some of this information from Claude Shannon et. al.), it's at least partially because the English language (and quite a few other forms of communication) have a fair amount of redundancy built in to ensure that the intended message gets across one way or another. There's an expectation fulfilled by most of the given text (and also by cultural influence, I think) there that the message is, in fact, supposed to be a certain way. Maybe that's stating the obvious, but similar messages have been reinforced so much that we can probably recognize dick-boasting by, well, only four or five letters and possibly a space.
... Maybe someone else can explain better than I have. (Still a really good book though.)
In the book The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood James Gleick has a really good description of a meme. He obviously talks about Dawkins' usage relating to genes from The Selfish Gene, but further extends this to the idea of ideas. In our reddit-world, this manifests itself as the memes we all know and love. In real life, a meme could further be things such as cliches, a popular song, a propagated symbol (i.e. mcdonald's arches) etc.
What I'm getting at is that here at r/atheism, Dawkins is a meme, (even before this picture of him with big white text that people will edit into funny sayings) because to many of us here he represents the idea of atheism and we talk about him all the time.
I'd read a cool book about technology if you like history. "The Information" is a good book I read on the topic which isnt very technical, at all. http://www.amazon.com/The-Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/0375423729
http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Introduction/dp/0199291152 -
http://www.amazon.com/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/0375423729
The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood.
I'm reading it right now (cough, cough), and it's amazing. It'll really blow your mind. It's about everything from African talking drums to quantum physics, presented in a really easy to read and understand way, with a really engaging story.
I know you already mentioned Huxley, but I have to first say Brave New World. Just because, man, nothing else could have really opened my eyes to a relative morality at such a young age. "Let's just purposefully grow people. Then let's have them embrace their sexuality at a really young age. Oh, and there are these other 'savages' that practice many of the old ways. We don't talk about them much. Oh, and all the old religion got mashed up when we put all the people together, so they sort of worship this Christ type mother earth type thing. It's cool. They're fine."
Then there's The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (click for online free version published by the author.)
Where do I start with this book? First, I would say it's both sexually and violently graphic. That's not the point, though. The point is: What happens when we actually do have a god that can, and will, give us whatever we want? Whatever we want, that is, except death. Everyone is immortal and everyone can invent their own world to live in. What happens? Really really good stuff. A short book, but just blew my mind.
Finally, I'm finding it hard to decide between Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character, The Information, and Freakonomics. Each of these really expanded the way I think of things and how I look at the world around me. I'd recommend any one of them, it just depends on what you're interested in.