Information theory began as a bridge from mathematics to electrical engineering and from there to computing. — James Gleick Copy Share Image
Every new medium transforms the nature of human thought. In the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
Scientifically, information is a choice - a yes-or-no choice. In a broader sense, information is everything that informs our world - writing,… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
The word 'code' turns out to be a really important word for my book, 'The Information.' The genetic code is just one… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
We have met the Devil of Information Overload and his impish underlings, the computer virus, the busy signal, the dead link, and… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
I take the view that we all have permission to be a little baffled by quantum information science and algorithmic information theory. — James Gleick Copy Share Image
Information is not knowledge, and knowledge is not wisdom. Reading - even browsing - an old book can yield sustenance denied by… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
Writing comes into being to retain information across time and across space. Before writing, communication is evanescent and local; sounds carry a… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
Information is crucial to our biological substance - our genetic code is information. But before 1950, it was not obvious that inheritance… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
A good part of 'The Information' is about the transition from an oral to a literary culture. Books effected such a great… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
The cells of an organism are nodes in a richly interwoven communications network, transmitting and receiving, coding and decoding. Evolution itself embodies… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
You know, entropy is associated thermodynamically, in systems involving heat, with disorder. And in an analogous way, information is associated with disorder,… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
“We all behave like Maxwell’s demon. Organisms organize. In everyday experience lies the reason sober physicists across two centuries kept this cartoon… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
“For the purposes of science, information had to mean something special. Three centuries earlier, the new discipline of physics could not proceed… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
At its most fundamental, information is a binary choice. In other words, a single bit of information is one yes-or-no choice. — James Gleick Copy Share Image
The library will endure; it is the universe... We walk the corridors, searching the shelves and rearranging them, looking for lines of… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
The body itself is an information processor. Memory resides not just in brains but in every cell. No wonder genetics bloomed along… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
A bit, the smallest unit of information, the fundamental particle of information theory, is a choice, yes or no, on or off.… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
When the Lilliputians first saw Gulliver's watch, that "wonderful kind of engine...a globe, half silver and half of some transparent metal," they identified it… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
You know, entropy is associated thermodynamically, in systems involving heat, with disorder. And in an analogous way, information is associated with disorder, which seems… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
“No one has even a definitive spelling for Cawdrey’s name (Cowdrey, Cawdry). But then, no one agreed on the spelling of most names: they… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
“Where, then, is any particular gene—say, the gene for long legs in humans? This is a little like asking where is Beethoven’s Piano Sonata… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
Alphabetical order had to be invented to help people organize the first dictionaries. On the other hand, we may have reached a point where… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
A book is not necessarily made of paper. A book is not necessarily made to be read on a Kindle. A book is a… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
“From this point of view, the laws of science represent data compression in action. A theoretical physicist acts like a very clever coding algorithm.… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
Children and scientists share an outlook on life. If I do this, what will happen? is both the motto of the child at play… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
“Your body moves always in the present, the dividing line between the past and the future, but your mind is more free. It can… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
People worry about Twitter. Twitter is banal. It's 140-character messages. By definition, you can hardly say anything profound. On the other hand, we communicate.… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
