James Gleick's The Information

"...Sweeping survey that covers five milleniums of humanity's engagement with information" is the quote that comes from the NYT's review of this book by Geoffrey Nunberg on March 20.

I've liked Gleick's other books I read, particularly his Feynman biography, and I look forward to reading this one, too.

IN an age where public officials think that laying off teachers is the key to success in our economy, I wonder whether anyone can get a handle on the information we already have.  We need more programmers and more workers who understand how to create systems that organize raw data into meaningful patterns.  We need more educated workers to study and understand raw data and turn that raw data into meaningful structures that can make the world better, however you measure "better."  We don't have enough competent knowledge workers now, and it doesn't look like we're going to have enough in the future, either.

It's difficult, naturally, to demonstrate that if we had more knowledge workers we'd have more useful knowledge.  But it does seem inherently obvious.

It's said that Claude Shannon invented what's known as "information theory" with an influential paper in 1948.

Here is the link to Brain Pickings regarding this book.  This book is on the best books of 2011 lists from Amazon and Publishers Weekly here.

I'm looking forward to reading Gleick's new book.