Informative! [rim shot] ( )

I'm not going to pretend I understood 100% of this book. There were parts that left me feeling cross-eyed and dumb (I should say the most advanced math class I ever took was trigonometry in 11th grade). And yet the parts I understood were fascinating, mind-bending, and eye-opening. So I think I came out ahead.

I read Dawkins' [b:The Selfish Gene|61535|The Selfish Gene|Richard Dawkins|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347484876s/61535.jpg|1746717] when I was in college, so it was interesting to have it explained again here. I really didn't fully grasp what Dawkins was saying the first time around, and I'm sure I still don't, but I may be a little closer. The discussion of memes (I didn't even remember the meme part of The Selfish Gene--I thought of it primarily as that "I can has cheezburger" thing) was one of my favorite parts. I love that idea that ideas have a life and their own and they want to replicate the same way genes do.

( )

Reading about information science makes my brain hurt, but in a good way. I was familiar with bits and pieces of what Gleick discusses, but learned a huge amount from each chapter. Highly recommended! ( )

Книга об информации. 15 глав о том, как менялось понимание человечества об информации. Книга не является легкой для прочтения, так как наполнена формулами из физики, термодинамики, математики. Конечно же можно прочитать её не углубляясь в детали, но тогда и эффекта от книги не будет. Интересно проследить путь от африканских барабанов, которые служили для передачи информации между племенами в своей особенной форме, до создание словаря и понимание того, что письменность помогла нам создать мир, который мы имеем сейчас. Особенно интересно было проследить поиск Клодом Шенноном теорией об информации, и его попытки уложить всю сложность вселенной в 0,1.

Несмотря на достаточно сухую тему, книга не лишена чувствительности, в некоторых главах автор искусно описывает борьбу великих умов с парадигмом мышления предыдущих поколений и цену, которую они заплатили за это.

Последние несколько глав неоднозначны, автор пытается найти смысл или инструмент для борьбы с растущим кол-вом информации в мире. Книга была написана в 2011 г. в ИТ мире многое уже изменилось, люди стали лучше фильтровать и воспринимать поток растущий поток информации.

Особенно понравилось переплетение образов литературных произведений магического реализма с существующими онлайн сервисами. ( )

This was not what I was expecting. From the description given during our book club meeting and the bits of blurb I read, I thought this would be about the flood of information coming our way via the information superhighway. And maybe it would have some thoughts on how to deal with it.

Instead, this tells the history of Information, rather than the information superhighway (although it does include a bit about how we got the latter and what it may mean). And by history, I mean back to the days before writing. It is a very long, and often interesting, tale about the evolution of writing and human thought from the earliest days to the present.

The earlier parts of the book work better than the latter. This may be partially due to being more grounded in technology that is accessible to most people: speaking, writing, telegraph, telephone. Here the sidebars are easy to access and forgive. Later on, the subjects become deeper, more theoretical and harder to follow. I found myself wishing the author would stay more focused and help me understand it better, rather than telling more anecdotes about the scholars and scientists. Even so, I found the book to be thought provoking, although not provocative.

If you ever saw the BBC television show Connections with James Burke, this will seem familiar. If you haven't see that show, but like this book, go and find the show. You will likely find it informative and entertaining. ( )