Review - On The Information (2)

Work in progress (this draws from other posts).

Hello Claude - In 1939, graduate student Claude Shannon would describe himself as working "off and on" on analysis of fundamental properties of systems for the transmission of intelligence - that, in a note to his teacher, Vannevar Bush of M.I.T.  At the school in a basement, Shannon had helped run Bush's general-purpose Differential Analyzer, an acme of sorts in the evolution of the mechanical analog computer. His master's thesis was on symbolic analysis of switching circuits. Somewhere along the way he latched on to the germ of something that was intrinsic to both analog and what came to be digital communication.

Shannon held dual undergraduate degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics from the University of Michigan. It was probably a rare happenstance that there he'd studied the algebra of George Boole, which may have given him a unique view toward what would become digital logic after the transistor came along. "Off and on" was a notion he grew up on -- in his far-northern  Michigan home of Gaylord, where he worked as a Western Union messenger boy, on the farm land there where he rigged up a telegraph to a friend on barbed wire, or built a radio controlled model boat. The transistor was coming, and the timing was good.

A bit circuitous. Shannon opens the portal, as he opens The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick. The book itself is a bit circuitous. TBC

When I was young, Shannon's work was a tough nut to crack, but it certainly was intriguing. As a high school boy, I was interested in the future -- maybe more so than now, when I live and breathe and work in what that future became. Grappling with Shannon's basic information theories was part of my education about the future. TBC

The Racine Public Library - Growing up in a Wisconsin city across the lake from Shannon's birthplace, I tried to plow through the town library as best I could. I wanted to learn about computers, automation, and the combination of the two that was known in those days (the 1960s) as cybernetics or cybernation. I discovered for myself -- by chance, really -- that the fundamental elements of those ideas were Shannon's inventions.

For the better part of Shannon's life, analog communication ruled. TBC


Dis and That information theory - By removing ''meaning'' from his study of information [he writes: "the semantical aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem"], Shannon set the program for digital technology, that spreads like a weed these days in the body politic. Shannon created information theory; what we happen to be pondering these days is the converse - Disinformation theory. TBC.