The Information

A History, a Theory, a Flood

By: James Gleick

Narrated by: Rob Shapiro

Length: 16 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

James Gleick, the author of the best sellers Chaos and Genius, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: A revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era’s defining quality - the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world.

The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanishes as soon as it is born. From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long-misunderstood talking drums of Africa, Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness. He provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information: Charles Babbage, the idiosyncratic inventor of the first great mechanical computer; Ada Byron, the brilliant and doomed daughter of the poet, who became the first true programmer; pivotal figures like Samuel Morse and Alan Turing; and Claude Shannon, the creator of information theory itself. And then the information age arrives. Citizens of this world become experts willy-nilly: Aficionados of bits and bytes. And we sometimes feel we are drowning, swept by a deluge of signs and signals, news and images, blogs and tweets. The Information is the story of how we got here and where we are heading.

©2011 James Gleick (P)2011 Random House

Critic reviews

"Accessible and engrossing." ( Library Journal)

Excellent, as expected of Gleick

That transition from 'noise' to information to meaning ... and beyond. This book itself, is a catalyst, turning your mind's noise into understanding ... and further, an appreciation of how dynamic systems feed on negative entropy to create meaning, understanding and awareness of the phenomena of reality.

Prepare to get lots of information about informat.

I really enjoyed this read and I suggest it to anyone interested in the pursuit of information.

Wonderful!

Wonderful collection of stories and observations, great narration. James Gleick writes beautifully about the history and impact of the sciences and the people who make it happen.

Far too long

A disappointment. Far too long and much to much information -- a deluge of information. Needs a good editor.

Great Perspective

This was a great book and helped me see certain things in a different light. Some of the math was too abstract for my thinking, but the remainder of the book was excellent.

nothing less than a world view

love this book as much as any nonfiction i have experienced. incredibly prescient already and he just wrote it. the performance is also notably good.

Great Author. Another Great Book.

This book is very well narrated. The narrator never gets in the way of the message. I did struggle to stick with this book somewhere around the middle. and as such, I may recommend starting with the epilogue to provide some motivation to the reader/listener. Still, I believe that this is a very important book and students of multiple disciplines will be able to see how their piece of the pie fits into the whole.

Halfway through, the material is great.

The book is great and the narrator has a good voice. The noises he makes with his tongue and mouth when not speaking are VERY distracting though and I had to switch to listening in my car or speaker and NOT my earbuds when running. After every few words he makes these awful noises with his mouth when I assume he's repositioning his tongue. It's kind of gross actually and distracting from the material. The only other book I've listened to with this problem was the Benjamin Franklin autobiography by Walter Isaacson. I'd highly recommend the book though.

Made me nostalgic

As a computer engineer/scientist, I found this book to be simply beautiful. Like stepping into your grandmother's attic and discovering treasures, which brings back a flood of memories. It reminded me of the beauty of the field of information science. But more than that, it brought to life the familiar theories pounded into us through dry textbooks. It tells the stories of the people behind the thoughts that changed the way our world works. It weaves together disparate fields. As any great book should, this will make you look at the world through different eyes.

So beautiful.

enchanting and informative

From chapter one and the story of the talking drums, i was hooked. There are so many new ideas (new to me, anyway) in this book that it will take several listens to absorb them all. I also plan to get the hardcopy in order to reread certain passages. I loved it.