The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
Ah! I am a sucker for this form in pop science: “primary research into some unjustly obscure thing, pulling together the historical and scientific strands, revealing the excitement and transcendence in the unsexy, un-Arts thing, and making the reader feel smarter and more solidly located in the modern world”. Here it's information technology very broadly construed – so African talking drums, Morse, bioinformatics, memetics, Hawking radiation, Wiki, and so on.
Unbelievably, I’d never heard of the hero of the tale, Claude Shannon, because he was quiet and didn’t make any metaphysical claims for his profound work. Loads and loads of tasty gobbets to boot
Shot through with the joy of discovery, and all of it unbleached by the drudgery, familiarity, and commercialism evoked in “I.T.”.
Unbelievably, I’d never heard of the hero of the tale, Claude Shannon, because he was quiet and didn’t make any metaphysical claims for his profound work. Loads and loads of tasty gobbets to boot
“I do not believe that my father was such a Poet as I shall be an Analyst (& Metaphysician)…” - Lovelace
“A theoretical physicist acts as a very clever coding algorithm.”
“Across the centuries they all felt the joy in reckoning: Napier and Briggs, Kepler and Babbage, making their lists, building their towers…”
Shot through with the joy of discovery, and all of it unbleached by the drudgery, familiarity, and commercialism evoked in “I.T.”.