With the advent of computing, human invention crossed a threshold into a world different from everything that came before. The computer is… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
For the modern physicist, reality is the whole thing, past and future joined in a single history. The sensation of now is… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
In the 1920s, a generation before the coming of solid-state electronics, one could look at the circuits and see how the electron… — 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
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
If we want to live freely and privately in the interconnected world of the twenty-first century - and surely we do -… — James Gleick Copy Share Image
The Fifties and Sixties were years of unreal optimism about weather forecasting. Newspapers and magazines were filled with hope for weather science,… — 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
Nanosecond precision matters for worldwide communications systems. It matters for navigation by Global Positioning System satellite signals: an error of a billionth… — 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
