Book Review. A Hear At Play: How Claude Shannon Invented The Data Age
This mass was published past times Jimmy Soni as well as Rob Goodman inwards 2017. It is 385 pages long as well as informative.
This is a practiced book. Shannon is already an extremely interesting researcher, so the mass is interesting. The writing is good, gets really practiced at some places, but it is non top-class writing. A master copy storyteller similar Michael Lewis ( e.g., "Undoing Project"), Walter Isaacson, or Steven Levy would have got made this mass excellent. I estimate the divergence would live that these masters would pose inwards an monastic enjoin of magnitude to a greater extent than research inwards to the subject, do dozens of interviews, as well as extensive archive search. They would also distill the story as well as build the mass around a unmarried potent theme alongside some side themes tying to that, as well as tell a much to a greater extent than engaging story. They would non acquire out a stone unturned. They would go the extra mile to signal us to the insights they gathered, without explicitly showing them, but gently nudging us toward them to brand us think nosotros came upward alongside those insights.
In the mass review for "Range: Why Generalists Triumph inwards a Specialized World", I had included this paragraph virtually Shannon.
For his PhD inwards 1940, nether supervision of Vannevar Bush, Shannon developed a mathematical formulation for Mendelian genetics, called "An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics".
Then inwards 1948, 11 years later on after his MS thesis, he founded information theory alongside a landmark paper, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", alongside applications to digital communication, storage, as well as cryptography.
He has been really influential inwards cryptography (with the introduction of one-time pads), artificial tidings (with his electromechanical mouse Theseus), chess playing computers, as well as inwards providing a mathematical theory of juggling, amidst other things.
The tragic part of this story is how it ends. After suffering progressive reject of Alzheimer's affliction over to a greater extent than than fifteen years, Shannon died at the historic menstruum of 84, on Feb 24, 2001.
As is my custom inwards mass reviews, hither are some of my highlights from the book. The mass has many to a greater extent than interesting facts as well as information virtually Shannon, so I recommend the mass strongly if yous wishing to larn to a greater extent than virtually Shannon.
He was a human being immune to scientific fashion as well as insulated from sentiment of all kinds, on all subjects, fifty-fifty himself, peculiarly himself; a human being of closed doors as well as long silences, who thought his best thoughts inwards spartan bachelor apartments as well as empty role buildings.
It is a puzzle of his life that someone so skilled at abstracting his way past times the tangible globe was also so gifted at manipulating it. Shannon was a born tinkerer: a telegraph describe rigged from a barbed-wire fence, a makeshift barn elevator, as well as a individual backyard trolley tell the story of his small-town Michigan childhood. And it was equally an peculiarly advanced sort of tinkerer that he caught the oculus of Vannevar Bush—soon to go the most powerful scientist inwards America as well as Shannon’s most influential mentor—who brought him to MIT as well as charged him alongside the upkeep of the differential analyzer, an analog computing machine the size of a room, “a fearsome thing of shafts, gears, strings, as well as wheels rolling on disks” that happened to live the most advanced thinking machine of its day.
Shannon’s report of the electrical switches directing the guts of that mechanical behemoth led him to an insight at the foundation of our digital age: that switches could do far to a greater extent than than command the stream of electricity through circuits—that they could live used to evaluate whatever logical tilt nosotros could think of, could fifty-fifty appear to "decide." A serial of binary choices—on/off, true/false, 1/0—could, inwards principle, perform a passable imitation of a brain. That leap, equally Walter Isaacson pose it, “became the basic concept underlying all digital computers.” It was Shannon’s inaugural off great feat of abstraction. He was only twenty-one.
And yet Shannon proved that dissonance could live defeated, that information sent from Point A could live received alongside perfection at Point B, non just often, but essentially always. He gave engineers the conceptual tools to digitize information as well as post it flawlessly (or, to live precise, alongside an arbitrarily little amount of error), a outcome considered hopelessly utopian upward until the 2d Shannon proved it was not.
Having completed his pathbreaking go past times the historic menstruum of thirty-two, he mightiness have got spent his remaining decades equally a scientific celebrity, a world human face upward of innovation: some other Bertrand Russell, or Albert Einstein, or Richard Feynman, or Steve Jobs. Instead, he spent them tinkering. An electronic, maze-solving mouse named Theseus. An Erector Set turtle that walked his house. The inaugural off project design for a chess-playing computer, a distant ancestor of IBM’s Deep Blue. The first-ever wearable computer. A estimator that operated inwards Roman numerals, code-named THROBAC (“Thrifty Roman-Numeral Backward-Looking Computer”). A fleet of customized unicycles. Years devoted to the scientific report of juggling.
Claude’s gifts were of the Einsteinian variety: a potent intuitive experience for the dimensions of a problem, alongside less of a concern for the step-by-step details. As he pose it, “I think I’m to a greater extent than visual than symbolic. I attempt to acquire a feeling of what’s going on. Equations come upward later.” Like Einstein, he needed a sounding board, a role that Betty played perfectly. His colleague David Slepian said, “He didn’t know math really deeply. But he could invent whatever he needed.” Robert Gallager, some other colleague, went a stair further: “He had a weird insight. He could come across through things. He would say, ‘Something similar this should live true’ . . . as well as he was ordinarily right. . . . You can’t educate an entire acre out of whole stuff if yous don’t have got superb intuition.”
I had what I thought was a genuinely neat research idea, for a much ameliorate communication scheme than what other people were building, alongside all sorts of bells as well as whistles. I went inwards to speak to him [Shannon] virtually it as well as I explained the problems I was having trying to analyze it. And he looked at it, sort of puzzled, as well as said, “Well, do yous genuinely demand this assumption?” And I said, well, I suppose nosotros could await at the work without that assumption. And nosotros went on for a while. And so he said, again, “Do yous demand this other assumption?” And I saw instantly that that would simplify the problem, although it started looking a picayune impractical as well as a picayune similar a toy problem. And he kept doing this, virtually 5 or 6 times. I don’t think he saw instantly that that’s how the work should live solved; I think he was just groping his way along, except that he just had this instinct of which parts of the work were primal as well as which were just details. At a sure point, I was getting upset, because I saw this neat research work of mine had go almost trivial. But at a sure point, alongside all these pieces stripped out, nosotros both saw how to solve it. And so nosotros gradually pose all these picayune assumptions dorsum inwards as well as then, suddenly, nosotros saw the solution to the whole problem. And that was just the way he worked. He would discovery the simplest illustration of something as well as so he would somehow sort out why that worked as well as why that was the right way of looking at
“What’s your clandestine inwards remaining so carefree?” an interviewer asked Shannon toward the cease of his life. Shannon answered, “I do what comes naturally, as well as usefulness is non my principal goal. I maintain bespeak myself, How would yous do this? Is it possible to brand a machine do that? Can yous attempt out this theorem?” For an abstracted human being at his most content, the globe isn’t at that spot to live used, but to live played with, manipulated past times manus as well as mind. Shannon was an atheist, as well as seems to have got come upward past times it naturally, without whatever crisis of faith; puzzling over the origins of human tidings alongside the same interviewer, he said matter-of-factly, “I don’t make off to live a religious human being as well as I don’t think it would assist if I were!” And yet, inwards his instinct that the globe nosotros come across only stands for something else, at that spot is an inkling that his distant Puritan ancestors mightiness have got recognized equally kin.
Engineering’s rising profile began to describe the attending of deans inwards other quarters of the university, as well as disciplinary lines began to blur. By the fourth dimension Shannon began his dual degrees inwards mathematics as well as engineering, a generation later, the ii curricula had largely merged into one.
It was Vannevar Bush who brought analog computing to its highest level, a machine for all purposes, a landmark on the way from tool to brain. And it was Claude Shannon who, inwards a genius accident, helped obsolete it.
In Michigan, Shannon had learned (in a philosophy class, no less) that whatever tilt of logic could live captured inwards symbols as well as equations—and that these equations could live solved alongside a serial of simple, math-like rules. You mightiness attempt out a tilt truthful or faux without ever agreement what it meant. You would live less distracted, inwards fact, if yous chose non to empathise it: deduction could live automated. The pivotal figure inwards this translation from the vagaries of words to the sharpness of math was a nineteenth-century genius named George Boole, a self-taught English linguistic communication mathematician whose cobbler virile individual bring upward couldn’t afford to maintain him inwards schoolhouse beyond the historic menstruum of sixteen.
Finished inwards the autumn of 1937, Shannon’s master’s thesis, “A Symbolic Analysis of Relay as well as Switching Circuits,” was presented to an audience inwards Washington, D.C., as well as published to career-making applause the next year.
A bound from logic to symbols to circuits: “I think I had to a greater extent than fun doing that than anything else inwards my life,” Shannon remembered fondly. An odd as well as wonkish sense of fun, maybe—but hither was a immature man, just twenty-one now, total of the thrill of knowing that he had looked into the box of switches as well as relays as well as seen something no i else had. All that remained were the details. In the years to come, it would live equally if he forgot that publication was something nonetheless required of bright scientists; he’d pointlessly incubate remarkable go for years, as well as he’d cease upward inwards a describe of piece of work solid alongside an attic stuffed alongside notes, half-finished articles, as well as “good questions” on ruled paper. But now, ambitious as well as unproven, he had go pouring out of him.
Armed alongside these insights, Shannon spent the residual of his thesis demonstrating their possibilities. A estimator for adding binary numbers; a five-button combination lock alongside electronic alarm—as shortly equally the equations were worked out, they were equally practiced equally built. Circuit pattern was, for the inaugural off time, a science. And turning fine art into scientific discipline would live the hallmark of Shannon’s career.
Somewhere on the listing of Vannevar Bush’s accomplishments, then, should live his role inwards killing American eugenics. As president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, which funded the Eugenics Record Office, he forced its sterilization-promoting manager into retirement as well as ordered the role to closed for practiced on Dec 31, 1939.
But the toxicant tree bore some useful fruit. (Few scientists had compiled ameliorate information on heredity as well as inheritance than eugenicists.) And Shannon was there, inwards its lastly months, to collect what he could of it [for his PhD thesis titled "An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics".]
Bell researchers were encouraged to think decades downwards the road, to imagine how engineering could radically alteration the grapheme of everyday life, to wonder how Bell mightiness “connect all of us, as well as all of our novel machines, together.” One Bell employee of a later on era summarized it similar this: “When I inaugural off came at that spot was the philosophy: look, what you’re doing mightiness non live of import for x years or 20 years, but that’s fine, we’ll live at that spot then.”
Claude Shannon was i of those who thrived. Among the institutions that had dotted the landscape of Shannon’s life, it’s hard to imagine a identify ameliorate suited to his mix of passions as well as particular working style than the Bell Laboratories of the 1940s. “I had liberty to do anything I wanted from almost the hateful solar daytime I started,” he reflected. “They never told me what to go on.”
“I think he did the go alongside that fearfulness inwards him, that he mightiness have got to go into the Army, which agency existence alongside lots of people around which he couldn’t stand. He was phobic virtually crowds as well as people he didn’t know.”
If anything, his reaction to the state of war go was quite the opposite: the whole atmosphere left a bitter taste. The secrecy, the intensity, the drudgery, the obligatory teamwork—all of it seems to have got gotten to him inwards a deeply personal way. Indeed, i of the few accounts available to us, from Claude’s girlfriend, suggests that he constitute himself largely bored as well as frustrated past times wartime projects, as well as that the only outlet for his individual research came on his ain time, slowly at night. “He said he hated it, as well as so he felt really guilty virtually existence tired out inwards the forenoon as well as getting at that spot really late. . . . I took him past times the manus as well as sometimes I walked him to work—that made him experience better.” It’s telling that Shannon was reluctant, fifty-fifty decades later, to speak virtually this menstruum inwards whatever variety of depth, fifty-fifty to identify unit of measurement as well as friends. In a later on interview, he would simply say, alongside a touching on of disappointment inwards his words, that “those were busy times during the state of war as well as instantly afterwards as well as [my research] was non considered inaugural off priority work.” This was true, it appears, fifty-fifty at Bell Labs, famously open-minded though it may have got been.
As inwards other areas of Shannon’s life, his most of import go inwards cryptography yielded a rigorous, theoretical underpinning for many of a field’s key concepts. This paper, “A Mathematical Theory of Cryptography—Case 20878,” contained of import antecedents of Shannon’s later on work—but it also provided the first-ever proof of a critical concept inwards cryptology: the “one-time pad.”
According to Turing’s biographer, Andrew Hodges, Shannon as well as Turing met daily over tea, inwards public, inwards the conspicuously minor Bell Labs cafeteria.
Shannon, for his part, was amazed past times the lineament of Turing’s thinking. “I think Turing had a great mind, a really great mind,” Shannon later on said.
The go wasn’t linear; ideas came when they came. “These things sometimes... i nighttime I recollect I woke upward inwards the middle of the nighttime as well as I had an thought as well as I stayed upward all nighttime working on that.” To moving painting Shannon during this fourth dimension is to come across a sparse human being tapping a pencil against his knee articulation at absurd hours. This isn’t a human being on a deadline; it’s something to a greater extent than similar a human being obsessed alongside a individual puzzle, i that is years inwards the cracking. “He would go quiet, really very quiet. But he didn’t halt working on his napkins,” said Maria. “Two or 3 days inwards a row. And so he would await up, as well as he’d say, ‘Why are yous so quiet?’ ”
The existent stair out of information is non inwards the symbols nosotros send—it’s inwards the symbols nosotros could have got sent, but did not. To post a message is to brand a selection from a puddle of possible symbols, as well as “at each selection at that spot are eliminated all of the other symbols which mightiness have got been chosen.”
The information value of a symbol depends on the number of alternatives that were killed off inwards its choosing. Symbols from large vocabularies behave to a greater extent than information than symbols from little ones. Information measures liberty of choice.
Shannon proposed an unsettling inversion. Ignore the physical channel as well as select its limits: nosotros tin john overcome dissonance past times manipulating our messages. The reply to dissonance is non inwards how loudly nosotros speak, but inwards how nosotros say what nosotros say.
Shannon showed that the beleaguered key-tappers inwards Republic of Ireland as well as Newfoundland had essentially gotten it right, had already solved the work without knowing it. They mightiness have got said, if only they could have got read Shannon’s paper, “Please add together redundancy.” In a way, that was already evident enough: proverb the same thing twice inwards a noisy room is a way of adding redundancy, on the unstated supposition that the same error is unlikely to attach itself to the same identify ii times inwards a row. For Shannon, though, at that spot was much more. Our linguistic predictability, our congenital failure to maximize information, is genuinely our best protection from error.
The information theorist Sergio Verdú offered a similar assessment of Shannon’s paper: “It turned out that everything he claimed essentially was true. The newspaper was weak inwards what nosotros at nowadays telephone call upward ‘converses’ . . . but inwards fact, that adds to his genius rather than detracting from it, because he genuinely knew what he was doing.” In a sense, leaving the dots for others to connect was a calculated take away a opportunity on Shannon’s part: had he gone through that painstaking go himself, the newspaper would have got been much longer as well as appeared much later.
Shannon would later on tell a old instructor of his that Theseus had been “a demonstration device to brand vivid the powerfulness of a machine to solve, past times trial as well as error, a problem, as well as recollect the solution.” To the enquiry of whether a sure fossil oil variety of tidings could live “created,” Shannon had offered an answer: yes, it could. Machines could learn. They could, inwards the circumscribed way Shannon had demonstrated, brand mistakes, discovery alternatives, as well as avoid the same missteps again. Learning as well as retention could live programmed as well as plotted, the script written into a device that looked, from a sure perspective, similar an extremely unproblematic precursor of a brain. The thought that machines could simulate humans was nix new.
In a life of pursuits adopted as well as discarded alongside the ebb as well as stream of Shannon’s promiscuous curiosity, chess remained i of his few lifelong pastimes. One story has it that Shannon played so much chess at Bell Labs that “at to the lowest degree i supervisor became somewhat worried.” He had a gift for the game, as well as equally discussion of his talent spread throughout the Labs, many would attempt their manus at beating him. “Most of us didn’t play to a greater extent than than in i trial against him,” recalled Brockway McMillan.
He went on: “you tin john brand a thing that is smarter than yourself. Smartness inwards this game is made partly of fourth dimension as well as speed. I tin john build something which tin john operate much faster than my neurons.”
I think human being is a machine. No, I am non joking, I think human being is a machine of a really complex sort, different from a computer, i.e., different inwards organization. But it could live easily reproduced—it has virtually x billion nervus cells. And if yous model each i of these alongside electronic equipment it volition deed similar a human brain. If yous select [Bobby] Fischer’s caput as well as brand a model of that, it would play similar Fischer.
I am having a really enjoyable fourth dimension hither at MIT. The seminar is going really good but involves a practiced bargain of work. I had at inaugural off hoped to have got a rather cozy picayune grouping of virtually 8 or x advanced students, but the inaugural off hateful solar daytime xl people showed up, including many faculty members from M.I.T., some from Harvard, a number of doctorate candidates, as well as quite a few engineers from Lincoln Laboratory. . . . I am giving 2 i as well as a one-half threescore minutes sessions each week, as well as the response from the class is exceptionally good. They are almost all next it at 100 percent. I also made a fault inwards a stand upward for of generosity when I inaugural off came hither of agreeing to give quite a number of talks at colloquia, etc., as well as at nowadays that the days are kickoff to gyre around, I discovery myself pretty pressed for time.
In a lecture titled “Reliable Machines from Unreliable Components,” Shannon presented the next challenge: “In illustration men’s lives depend upon the successful functioning of a machine, it is hard to determine on a satisfactorily depression probability of failure, as well as inwards particular, it may non live adequate to have got men’s fates depend upon the successful functioning of unmarried components equally practiced equally they may be.” What followed was an analysis of the error-correcting as well as fail-safe mechanisms that mightiness resolve such a dilemma.
When an offering came for a total professorship as well as a permanent motion to Massachusetts, it was hard to decline. If he accepted, Shannon would live named a Professor of Communication Sciences, as well as Professor of Mathematics, alongside permanent tenure, effective Jan 1, 1957, alongside a salary of $17,000 per twelvemonth (about $143,000 inwards 2017).
After accepting the MIT offer, the Shannons left for Cambridge via California—a year-long detour for a fellowship at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study inwards the Behavioral Sciences. Prestigious equally the appointment was, the Shannons mainly treated it equally an excuse to come across the country. They made the leisurely drive through the West’s national parks to California, as well as back, inwards a VW bus.
Before setting off for the West, though, Claude as well as Betty purchased a describe of piece of work solid at 5 Cambridge Street inwards Winchester, Massachusetts, a bedchamber community 8 miles due north of MIT. Once their California twelvemonth was complete, they returned to their novel home. In Winchester, the Shannons were closed plenty to campus for a quick commute but far plenty away to alive an essentially individual life. They were also living inwards a slice of history—an peculiarly appropriate i inwards calorie-free of Shannon’s background as well as interests.
The describe of piece of work solid would figure prominently inwards Shannon’s world image. Nearly every story virtually him, from 1957 on, situated him at the describe of piece of work solid on the lake—usually inwards the two-story add-on that the Shannons built equally an all-purpose room for gadget storage as well as display, a infinite media profiles ofttimes dubbed the “toy room,” but which his missy Peggy as well as her ii older brothers simply called “Dad’s room.” The Shannons gave their domicile a name: Entropy House. Claude’s condition equally a mathematical luminary would acquire inwards a pilgrimage site for students as well as colleagues, peculiarly equally his on-campus responsibilities dwindled toward nothing.
Even at MIT, Shannon bent his go around his hobbies as well as enthusiasms. “Although he continued to supervise students, he was non genuinely a co-worker, inwards the normal sense of the term, equally he ever seemed to maintain a bird of distance from his swain associates,” wrote i swain faculty member. With no particular academic ambitions, Shannon felt picayune pull per unit of measurement area to issue academic papers. He grew a beard, began running every day, as well as stepped upward his tinkering. What resulted were some of Shannon’s most creative as well as whimsical endeavors. There was the trumpet that shot give notice out of its bell when played. The handmade unicycles, inwards every permutation: a unicycle alongside no seat; a unicycle alongside no pedals; a unicycle built for two. There was the eccentric unicycle: a unicycle alongside an off-center hub that caused the passenger to motion upward as well as downwards spell pedaling forwards as well as added an extra bird of difficulty to Shannon’s juggling. (The eccentric unicycle was the inaugural off of its kind. Ingenious though it mightiness have got been, it caused Shannon’s assistant, Charlie Manning, to fearfulness for his safety—and to applaud when he witnessed the inaugural off successful ride.) There was the chairlift that took surprised guests downwards from the house’s porch to the border of the lake. A machine that solved Rubik’s cubes. Chess-playing machines. Handmade robots, large as well as small. Shannon’s mind, it seems, was finally gratis to convey its most outlandish ideas to mechanical life. Looking back, Shannon summed it all upward equally happily pointless: “I’ve ever pursued my interests without much regard to fiscal value or value to the world. I’ve spent lots of fourth dimension on totally useless things.” Tellingly, he made no distinction betwixt his interests inwards information as well as his interests inwards unicycles; they were all moves inwards the same game.
One professor, Hermann Haus, remembered a lecture of his that Shannon attended. “I was just so impressed,” Haus recalled, “he was really variety as well as asked leading questions. In fact, i of those questions led to an entire novel chapter inwards a mass I was writing.”
He was non the sort of individual who would give a class as well as say “this was the essence of such as well as such.” He would say, “Last night, I was looking at this as well as I came upward alongside this interesting way of looking at it.” He’d say
Shannon became a whetstone for others’ ideas as well as intuitions. Rather than offering answers, he asked probing questions; instead of solutions, he gave approaches. As Larry Roberts, a graduate pupil of that time, remembered, “Shannon’s favorite thing to do was to hear to what yous had to say as well as so just say, ‘What about...’ as well as so follow alongside an approach yous hadn’t thought of. That’s how he gave his advice.” This was how Shannon preferred to teach: equally a swain traveler as well as work solver, just equally eager equally his students to discovery a novel route or a fresh approach to a standing puzzle.
Even alongside his aversion to writing things down, the famous attic stuffed alongside half-finished work, as well as countless hypotheses circulating inwards his mind—and fifty-fifty when i newspaper on the scale of his “Mathematical Theory of Communication” would have got counted equally a lifetime’s accomplishment—Shannon nonetheless managed to issue hundreds of pages’ worth of papers as well as memoranda, many of which opened novel lines of research inwards information theory. That he had also written seminal works inwards other fields—switching, cryptography, chess programming—and that he mightiness have got been a pathbreaking geneticist, had he cared to be, was extraordinary.
The guild benefited from Shannon equally well, inwards his roles equally network node as well as informal consultant. For instance, when Teledyne received an acquisition offering from a spoken communication recognition company, Shannon advised Singleton to plough it down. From his ain experience at the Labs, he doubted that spoken communication recognition would behave fruit anytime soon: the engineering was inwards its early on stages, as well as during his fourth dimension at the Labs, he’d seen much fourth dimension as well as liberate energy fruitlessly sunk into it. The years of counsel paid off, for Singleton as well as for Shannon himself: his investment inwards Teledyne achieved an annual chemical compound render of 27 per centum over twenty-five years.
The stock marketplace was, inwards some ways, the strangest of Shannon’s late-life enthusiasms. One of the recurrent tropes of recollections from identify unit of measurement as well as friends is Shannon’s seeming indifference to money. By i telling, Shannon moved his life savings out of his checking concern human relationship only when Betty insisted that he do so. A colleague recalled seeing a large uncashed cheque on Shannon’s desk at MIT, which inwards fourth dimension gave rising to some other legend: that his role was flood alongside checks he was besides absentminded to cash. In a way, Shannon’s involvement inwards coin resembled his other passions. He was non out to accrue wealth for wealth’s sake, nor did he have got whatever burning wishing to ain the finer things inwards life. But coin created markets as well as math puzzles, problems that could live analyzed as well as interpreted as well as played out.
This is a practiced book. Shannon is already an extremely interesting researcher, so the mass is interesting. The writing is good, gets really practiced at some places, but it is non top-class writing. A master copy storyteller similar Michael Lewis ( e.g., "Undoing Project"), Walter Isaacson, or Steven Levy would have got made this mass excellent. I estimate the divergence would live that these masters would pose inwards an monastic enjoin of magnitude to a greater extent than research inwards to the subject, do dozens of interviews, as well as extensive archive search. They would also distill the story as well as build the mass around a unmarried potent theme alongside some side themes tying to that, as well as tell a much to a greater extent than engaging story. They would non acquire out a stone unturned. They would go the extra mile to signal us to the insights they gathered, without explicitly showing them, but gently nudging us toward them to brand us think nosotros came upward alongside those insights.
In the mass review for "Range: Why Generalists Triumph inwards a Specialized World", I had included this paragraph virtually Shannon.
[Shannon] launched the Information Age thank yous to a philosophy class he took to fulfill a requirement at the University of Michigan. In it, he was exposed to the go of self-taught nineteenth-century English linguistic communication logician George Boole, who assigned a value of 1 to truthful statements as well as 0 to faux statements as well as showed that logic problems could live solved similar math equations. It resulted inwards absolutely nix of practical importance until 70 years after Boole passed away, when Shannon did a summertime internship at AT&T’s Bell Labs research facility.
For his PhD inwards 1940, nether supervision of Vannevar Bush, Shannon developed a mathematical formulation for Mendelian genetics, called "An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics".
Then inwards 1948, 11 years later on after his MS thesis, he founded information theory alongside a landmark paper, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", alongside applications to digital communication, storage, as well as cryptography.
He has been really influential inwards cryptography (with the introduction of one-time pads), artificial tidings (with his electromechanical mouse Theseus), chess playing computers, as well as inwards providing a mathematical theory of juggling, amidst other things.
The tragic part of this story is how it ends. After suffering progressive reject of Alzheimer's affliction over to a greater extent than than fifteen years, Shannon died at the historic menstruum of 84, on Feb 24, 2001.
As is my custom inwards mass reviews, hither are some of my highlights from the book. The mass has many to a greater extent than interesting facts as well as information virtually Shannon, so I recommend the mass strongly if yous wishing to larn to a greater extent than virtually Shannon.
Shannon's research approach
Of course, information existed earlier Shannon, just equally objects had inertia earlier Newton. But earlier Shannon, at that spot was precious picayune sense of information equally an idea, a measurable quantity, an object fitted out for hard science. Before Shannon, information was a telegram, a photograph, a paragraph, a song. After Shannon, information was only abstracted into bits.He was a human being immune to scientific fashion as well as insulated from sentiment of all kinds, on all subjects, fifty-fifty himself, peculiarly himself; a human being of closed doors as well as long silences, who thought his best thoughts inwards spartan bachelor apartments as well as empty role buildings.
It is a puzzle of his life that someone so skilled at abstracting his way past times the tangible globe was also so gifted at manipulating it. Shannon was a born tinkerer: a telegraph describe rigged from a barbed-wire fence, a makeshift barn elevator, as well as a individual backyard trolley tell the story of his small-town Michigan childhood. And it was equally an peculiarly advanced sort of tinkerer that he caught the oculus of Vannevar Bush—soon to go the most powerful scientist inwards America as well as Shannon’s most influential mentor—who brought him to MIT as well as charged him alongside the upkeep of the differential analyzer, an analog computing machine the size of a room, “a fearsome thing of shafts, gears, strings, as well as wheels rolling on disks” that happened to live the most advanced thinking machine of its day.
Shannon’s report of the electrical switches directing the guts of that mechanical behemoth led him to an insight at the foundation of our digital age: that switches could do far to a greater extent than than command the stream of electricity through circuits—that they could live used to evaluate whatever logical tilt nosotros could think of, could fifty-fifty appear to "decide." A serial of binary choices—on/off, true/false, 1/0—could, inwards principle, perform a passable imitation of a brain. That leap, equally Walter Isaacson pose it, “became the basic concept underlying all digital computers.” It was Shannon’s inaugural off great feat of abstraction. He was only twenty-one.
And yet Shannon proved that dissonance could live defeated, that information sent from Point A could live received alongside perfection at Point B, non just often, but essentially always. He gave engineers the conceptual tools to digitize information as well as post it flawlessly (or, to live precise, alongside an arbitrarily little amount of error), a outcome considered hopelessly utopian upward until the 2d Shannon proved it was not.
Having completed his pathbreaking go past times the historic menstruum of thirty-two, he mightiness have got spent his remaining decades equally a scientific celebrity, a world human face upward of innovation: some other Bertrand Russell, or Albert Einstein, or Richard Feynman, or Steve Jobs. Instead, he spent them tinkering. An electronic, maze-solving mouse named Theseus. An Erector Set turtle that walked his house. The inaugural off project design for a chess-playing computer, a distant ancestor of IBM’s Deep Blue. The first-ever wearable computer. A estimator that operated inwards Roman numerals, code-named THROBAC (“Thrifty Roman-Numeral Backward-Looking Computer”). A fleet of customized unicycles. Years devoted to the scientific report of juggling.
Claude’s gifts were of the Einsteinian variety: a potent intuitive experience for the dimensions of a problem, alongside less of a concern for the step-by-step details. As he pose it, “I think I’m to a greater extent than visual than symbolic. I attempt to acquire a feeling of what’s going on. Equations come upward later.” Like Einstein, he needed a sounding board, a role that Betty played perfectly. His colleague David Slepian said, “He didn’t know math really deeply. But he could invent whatever he needed.” Robert Gallager, some other colleague, went a stair further: “He had a weird insight. He could come across through things. He would say, ‘Something similar this should live true’ . . . as well as he was ordinarily right. . . . You can’t educate an entire acre out of whole stuff if yous don’t have got superb intuition.”
I had what I thought was a genuinely neat research idea, for a much ameliorate communication scheme than what other people were building, alongside all sorts of bells as well as whistles. I went inwards to speak to him [Shannon] virtually it as well as I explained the problems I was having trying to analyze it. And he looked at it, sort of puzzled, as well as said, “Well, do yous genuinely demand this assumption?” And I said, well, I suppose nosotros could await at the work without that assumption. And nosotros went on for a while. And so he said, again, “Do yous demand this other assumption?” And I saw instantly that that would simplify the problem, although it started looking a picayune impractical as well as a picayune similar a toy problem. And he kept doing this, virtually 5 or 6 times. I don’t think he saw instantly that that’s how the work should live solved; I think he was just groping his way along, except that he just had this instinct of which parts of the work were primal as well as which were just details. At a sure point, I was getting upset, because I saw this neat research work of mine had go almost trivial. But at a sure point, alongside all these pieces stripped out, nosotros both saw how to solve it. And so nosotros gradually pose all these picayune assumptions dorsum inwards as well as then, suddenly, nosotros saw the solution to the whole problem. And that was just the way he worked. He would discovery the simplest illustration of something as well as so he would somehow sort out why that worked as well as why that was the right way of looking at
“What’s your clandestine inwards remaining so carefree?” an interviewer asked Shannon toward the cease of his life. Shannon answered, “I do what comes naturally, as well as usefulness is non my principal goal. I maintain bespeak myself, How would yous do this? Is it possible to brand a machine do that? Can yous attempt out this theorem?” For an abstracted human being at his most content, the globe isn’t at that spot to live used, but to live played with, manipulated past times manus as well as mind. Shannon was an atheist, as well as seems to have got come upward past times it naturally, without whatever crisis of faith; puzzling over the origins of human tidings alongside the same interviewer, he said matter-of-factly, “I don’t make off to live a religious human being as well as I don’t think it would assist if I were!” And yet, inwards his instinct that the globe nosotros come across only stands for something else, at that spot is an inkling that his distant Puritan ancestors mightiness have got recognized equally kin.
University of Michigan
A’s inwards math as well as scientific discipline as well as Latin, scattered B’s inwards the rest: the sixteen-year-old high schoolhouse graduate sent his tape off to the University of Michigan, along alongside an application that was 3 pages of fill-in-the-blanks, the spelling errors casually crossed out.Engineering’s rising profile began to describe the attending of deans inwards other quarters of the university, as well as disciplinary lines began to blur. By the fourth dimension Shannon began his dual degrees inwards mathematics as well as engineering, a generation later, the ii curricula had largely merged into one.
MIT
The job—master’s pupil as well as assistant on the differential analyzer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—was tailor-made for a immature human being who could discovery equal joy inwards equations as well as construction, thinking as well as building. "I pushed hard for that chore as well as got it."It was Vannevar Bush who brought analog computing to its highest level, a machine for all purposes, a landmark on the way from tool to brain. And it was Claude Shannon who, inwards a genius accident, helped obsolete it.
In Michigan, Shannon had learned (in a philosophy class, no less) that whatever tilt of logic could live captured inwards symbols as well as equations—and that these equations could live solved alongside a serial of simple, math-like rules. You mightiness attempt out a tilt truthful or faux without ever agreement what it meant. You would live less distracted, inwards fact, if yous chose non to empathise it: deduction could live automated. The pivotal figure inwards this translation from the vagaries of words to the sharpness of math was a nineteenth-century genius named George Boole, a self-taught English linguistic communication mathematician whose cobbler virile individual bring upward couldn’t afford to maintain him inwards schoolhouse beyond the historic menstruum of sixteen.
Finished inwards the autumn of 1937, Shannon’s master’s thesis, “A Symbolic Analysis of Relay as well as Switching Circuits,” was presented to an audience inwards Washington, D.C., as well as published to career-making applause the next year.
A bound from logic to symbols to circuits: “I think I had to a greater extent than fun doing that than anything else inwards my life,” Shannon remembered fondly. An odd as well as wonkish sense of fun, maybe—but hither was a immature man, just twenty-one now, total of the thrill of knowing that he had looked into the box of switches as well as relays as well as seen something no i else had. All that remained were the details. In the years to come, it would live equally if he forgot that publication was something nonetheless required of bright scientists; he’d pointlessly incubate remarkable go for years, as well as he’d cease upward inwards a describe of piece of work solid alongside an attic stuffed alongside notes, half-finished articles, as well as “good questions” on ruled paper. But now, ambitious as well as unproven, he had go pouring out of him.
Armed alongside these insights, Shannon spent the residual of his thesis demonstrating their possibilities. A estimator for adding binary numbers; a five-button combination lock alongside electronic alarm—as shortly equally the equations were worked out, they were equally practiced equally built. Circuit pattern was, for the inaugural off time, a science. And turning fine art into scientific discipline would live the hallmark of Shannon’s career.
Vannevar Bush
More to the point, it was a thing of deep conviction for Bush that specialization was the decease of genius. “In these days, when at that spot is a style to specialize so closely, it is good for us to live reminded that the possibilities of existence at in i trial wide as well as deep did non overstep alongside Leonardo da Vinci or fifty-fifty Benjamin Franklin,” Bush said inwards a spoken communication at MIT.Somewhere on the listing of Vannevar Bush’s accomplishments, then, should live his role inwards killing American eugenics. As president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, which funded the Eugenics Record Office, he forced its sterilization-promoting manager into retirement as well as ordered the role to closed for practiced on Dec 31, 1939.
But the toxicant tree bore some useful fruit. (Few scientists had compiled ameliorate information on heredity as well as inheritance than eugenicists.) And Shannon was there, inwards its lastly months, to collect what he could of it [for his PhD thesis titled "An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics".]
Bell Labs
If Google’s “20 per centum time”—the exercise that frees one-fifth of a Google employee’s schedule to devote to blue-sky projects—seems similar a West Coast indulgence, so Bell Labs’ research operation, buoyed past times a federally approved monopoly as well as huge turn a profit margins, would appear gluttonous past times comparison.Bell researchers were encouraged to think decades downwards the road, to imagine how engineering could radically alteration the grapheme of everyday life, to wonder how Bell mightiness “connect all of us, as well as all of our novel machines, together.” One Bell employee of a later on era summarized it similar this: “When I inaugural off came at that spot was the philosophy: look, what you’re doing mightiness non live of import for x years or 20 years, but that’s fine, we’ll live at that spot then.”
Claude Shannon was i of those who thrived. Among the institutions that had dotted the landscape of Shannon’s life, it’s hard to imagine a identify ameliorate suited to his mix of passions as well as particular working style than the Bell Laboratories of the 1940s. “I had liberty to do anything I wanted from almost the hateful solar daytime I started,” he reflected. “They never told me what to go on.”
War time
Things were moving fast there, as well as I could aroma the state of war coming along. And it seemed to me I would live safer working full-time for the state of war effort, safer against the draft, which I didn’t precisely fancy. I was a delicate man, equally I am now... I was trying to play the game, to the best of my ability. But non only that, I thought I’d likely contribute a hell of a lot more.“I think he did the go alongside that fearfulness inwards him, that he mightiness have got to go into the Army, which agency existence alongside lots of people around which he couldn’t stand. He was phobic virtually crowds as well as people he didn’t know.”
If anything, his reaction to the state of war go was quite the opposite: the whole atmosphere left a bitter taste. The secrecy, the intensity, the drudgery, the obligatory teamwork—all of it seems to have got gotten to him inwards a deeply personal way. Indeed, i of the few accounts available to us, from Claude’s girlfriend, suggests that he constitute himself largely bored as well as frustrated past times wartime projects, as well as that the only outlet for his individual research came on his ain time, slowly at night. “He said he hated it, as well as so he felt really guilty virtually existence tired out inwards the forenoon as well as getting at that spot really late. . . . I took him past times the manus as well as sometimes I walked him to work—that made him experience better.” It’s telling that Shannon was reluctant, fifty-fifty decades later, to speak virtually this menstruum inwards whatever variety of depth, fifty-fifty to identify unit of measurement as well as friends. In a later on interview, he would simply say, alongside a touching on of disappointment inwards his words, that “those were busy times during the state of war as well as instantly afterwards as well as [my research] was non considered inaugural off priority work.” This was true, it appears, fifty-fifty at Bell Labs, famously open-minded though it may have got been.
As inwards other areas of Shannon’s life, his most of import go inwards cryptography yielded a rigorous, theoretical underpinning for many of a field’s key concepts. This paper, “A Mathematical Theory of Cryptography—Case 20878,” contained of import antecedents of Shannon’s later on work—but it also provided the first-ever proof of a critical concept inwards cryptology: the “one-time pad.”
According to Turing’s biographer, Andrew Hodges, Shannon as well as Turing met daily over tea, inwards public, inwards the conspicuously minor Bell Labs cafeteria.
Shannon, for his part, was amazed past times the lineament of Turing’s thinking. “I think Turing had a great mind, a really great mind,” Shannon later on said.
Information theory
On the evenings he was at home, Shannon was at go on a individual project. It had begun to crystallize inwards his hear inwards his graduate schoolhouse days. He would, at diverse points, suggest different dates of provenance. But whatever the appointment on which the thought inaugural off implanted itself inwards his mind, pen hadn’t met newspaper inwards earnest until New York as well as 1941. Now this noodling was both a welcome distraction from go at Bell Labs as well as an outlet to the deep theoretical go he prized so much, as well as which the state of war threatened to foreclose.The go wasn’t linear; ideas came when they came. “These things sometimes... i nighttime I recollect I woke upward inwards the middle of the nighttime as well as I had an thought as well as I stayed upward all nighttime working on that.” To moving painting Shannon during this fourth dimension is to come across a sparse human being tapping a pencil against his knee articulation at absurd hours. This isn’t a human being on a deadline; it’s something to a greater extent than similar a human being obsessed alongside a individual puzzle, i that is years inwards the cracking. “He would go quiet, really very quiet. But he didn’t halt working on his napkins,” said Maria. “Two or 3 days inwards a row. And so he would await up, as well as he’d say, ‘Why are yous so quiet?’ ”
The existent stair out of information is non inwards the symbols nosotros send—it’s inwards the symbols nosotros could have got sent, but did not. To post a message is to brand a selection from a puddle of possible symbols, as well as “at each selection at that spot are eliminated all of the other symbols which mightiness have got been chosen.”
The information value of a symbol depends on the number of alternatives that were killed off inwards its choosing. Symbols from large vocabularies behave to a greater extent than information than symbols from little ones. Information measures liberty of choice.
Shannon proposed an unsettling inversion. Ignore the physical channel as well as select its limits: nosotros tin john overcome dissonance past times manipulating our messages. The reply to dissonance is non inwards how loudly nosotros speak, but inwards how nosotros say what nosotros say.
Shannon showed that the beleaguered key-tappers inwards Republic of Ireland as well as Newfoundland had essentially gotten it right, had already solved the work without knowing it. They mightiness have got said, if only they could have got read Shannon’s paper, “Please add together redundancy.” In a way, that was already evident enough: proverb the same thing twice inwards a noisy room is a way of adding redundancy, on the unstated supposition that the same error is unlikely to attach itself to the same identify ii times inwards a row. For Shannon, though, at that spot was much more. Our linguistic predictability, our congenital failure to maximize information, is genuinely our best protection from error.
The information theorist Sergio Verdú offered a similar assessment of Shannon’s paper: “It turned out that everything he claimed essentially was true. The newspaper was weak inwards what nosotros at nowadays telephone call upward ‘converses’ . . . but inwards fact, that adds to his genius rather than detracting from it, because he genuinely knew what he was doing.” In a sense, leaving the dots for others to connect was a calculated take away a opportunity on Shannon’s part: had he gone through that painstaking go himself, the newspaper would have got been much longer as well as appeared much later.
Tinkering
Theseus was propelled past times a distich of magnets, i embedded inwards its hollow core, as well as i moving freely beneath the maze. The mouse would get down its course, bump into a wall, sense that it had hitting an obstruction alongside its “whiskers,” activate the right relay to attempt a novel path, as well as so repeat the procedure until it hitting its goal, a metallic element slice of cheese. The relays stored the directions of the right path inwards “memory”: in i trial the mouse had successfully navigated the maze past times trial as well as error, it could discovery the cheese a 2d fourth dimension alongside ease. Appearances to the contrary, Theseus the mouse was mainly the passive part of the endeavor: the underlying maze itself held the information as well as propelled Theseus alongside its magnet. Technically, equally Shannon would signal out, the mouse wasn’t solving the maze; the maze was solving the mouse. Yet, i way or another, the scheme was able to learn.Shannon would later on tell a old instructor of his that Theseus had been “a demonstration device to brand vivid the powerfulness of a machine to solve, past times trial as well as error, a problem, as well as recollect the solution.” To the enquiry of whether a sure fossil oil variety of tidings could live “created,” Shannon had offered an answer: yes, it could. Machines could learn. They could, inwards the circumscribed way Shannon had demonstrated, brand mistakes, discovery alternatives, as well as avoid the same missteps again. Learning as well as retention could live programmed as well as plotted, the script written into a device that looked, from a sure perspective, similar an extremely unproblematic precursor of a brain. The thought that machines could simulate humans was nix new.
In a life of pursuits adopted as well as discarded alongside the ebb as well as stream of Shannon’s promiscuous curiosity, chess remained i of his few lifelong pastimes. One story has it that Shannon played so much chess at Bell Labs that “at to the lowest degree i supervisor became somewhat worried.” He had a gift for the game, as well as equally discussion of his talent spread throughout the Labs, many would attempt their manus at beating him. “Most of us didn’t play to a greater extent than than in i trial against him,” recalled Brockway McMillan.
He went on: “you tin john brand a thing that is smarter than yourself. Smartness inwards this game is made partly of fourth dimension as well as speed. I tin john build something which tin john operate much faster than my neurons.”
I think human being is a machine. No, I am non joking, I think human being is a machine of a really complex sort, different from a computer, i.e., different inwards organization. But it could live easily reproduced—it has virtually x billion nervus cells. And if yous model each i of these alongside electronic equipment it volition deed similar a human brain. If yous select [Bobby] Fischer’s caput as well as brand a model of that, it would play similar Fischer.
MIT professorship
MIT made the inaugural off move: inwards 1956, the academy invited i of its most famous alumni, Claude Shannon, to pass a semester dorsum inwards Cambridge equally a visiting professor. Returning to his graduate schoolhouse haunts had something of a revivifying number on Claude, equally good equally Betty. For i thing, the metropolis of Cambridge was a bustle of activity compared to the comparatively sleepy New Bailiwick of Jersey suburbs. Betty remembered it equally an approximation of their Manhattan years, when going out to tiffin meant stepping into the urban whirl. Working inwards academia, too, had its charms. “There is an active construction of academy life that tends to overcome monotony as well as boredom,” wrote Shannon. “The novel classes, the vacations, the diverse academic exercises add together considerable diversity to the life here.” Reading those impersonal lines, i mightiness miss the implication that Shannon himself had grown bored.I am having a really enjoyable fourth dimension hither at MIT. The seminar is going really good but involves a practiced bargain of work. I had at inaugural off hoped to have got a rather cozy picayune grouping of virtually 8 or x advanced students, but the inaugural off hateful solar daytime xl people showed up, including many faculty members from M.I.T., some from Harvard, a number of doctorate candidates, as well as quite a few engineers from Lincoln Laboratory. . . . I am giving 2 i as well as a one-half threescore minutes sessions each week, as well as the response from the class is exceptionally good. They are almost all next it at 100 percent. I also made a fault inwards a stand upward for of generosity when I inaugural off came hither of agreeing to give quite a number of talks at colloquia, etc., as well as at nowadays that the days are kickoff to gyre around, I discovery myself pretty pressed for time.
In a lecture titled “Reliable Machines from Unreliable Components,” Shannon presented the next challenge: “In illustration men’s lives depend upon the successful functioning of a machine, it is hard to determine on a satisfactorily depression probability of failure, as well as inwards particular, it may non live adequate to have got men’s fates depend upon the successful functioning of unmarried components equally practiced equally they may be.” What followed was an analysis of the error-correcting as well as fail-safe mechanisms that mightiness resolve such a dilemma.
When an offering came for a total professorship as well as a permanent motion to Massachusetts, it was hard to decline. If he accepted, Shannon would live named a Professor of Communication Sciences, as well as Professor of Mathematics, alongside permanent tenure, effective Jan 1, 1957, alongside a salary of $17,000 per twelvemonth (about $143,000 inwards 2017).
After accepting the MIT offer, the Shannons left for Cambridge via California—a year-long detour for a fellowship at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study inwards the Behavioral Sciences. Prestigious equally the appointment was, the Shannons mainly treated it equally an excuse to come across the country. They made the leisurely drive through the West’s national parks to California, as well as back, inwards a VW bus.
Before setting off for the West, though, Claude as well as Betty purchased a describe of piece of work solid at 5 Cambridge Street inwards Winchester, Massachusetts, a bedchamber community 8 miles due north of MIT. Once their California twelvemonth was complete, they returned to their novel home. In Winchester, the Shannons were closed plenty to campus for a quick commute but far plenty away to alive an essentially individual life. They were also living inwards a slice of history—an peculiarly appropriate i inwards calorie-free of Shannon’s background as well as interests.
The describe of piece of work solid would figure prominently inwards Shannon’s world image. Nearly every story virtually him, from 1957 on, situated him at the describe of piece of work solid on the lake—usually inwards the two-story add-on that the Shannons built equally an all-purpose room for gadget storage as well as display, a infinite media profiles ofttimes dubbed the “toy room,” but which his missy Peggy as well as her ii older brothers simply called “Dad’s room.” The Shannons gave their domicile a name: Entropy House. Claude’s condition equally a mathematical luminary would acquire inwards a pilgrimage site for students as well as colleagues, peculiarly equally his on-campus responsibilities dwindled toward nothing.
Even at MIT, Shannon bent his go around his hobbies as well as enthusiasms. “Although he continued to supervise students, he was non genuinely a co-worker, inwards the normal sense of the term, equally he ever seemed to maintain a bird of distance from his swain associates,” wrote i swain faculty member. With no particular academic ambitions, Shannon felt picayune pull per unit of measurement area to issue academic papers. He grew a beard, began running every day, as well as stepped upward his tinkering. What resulted were some of Shannon’s most creative as well as whimsical endeavors. There was the trumpet that shot give notice out of its bell when played. The handmade unicycles, inwards every permutation: a unicycle alongside no seat; a unicycle alongside no pedals; a unicycle built for two. There was the eccentric unicycle: a unicycle alongside an off-center hub that caused the passenger to motion upward as well as downwards spell pedaling forwards as well as added an extra bird of difficulty to Shannon’s juggling. (The eccentric unicycle was the inaugural off of its kind. Ingenious though it mightiness have got been, it caused Shannon’s assistant, Charlie Manning, to fearfulness for his safety—and to applaud when he witnessed the inaugural off successful ride.) There was the chairlift that took surprised guests downwards from the house’s porch to the border of the lake. A machine that solved Rubik’s cubes. Chess-playing machines. Handmade robots, large as well as small. Shannon’s mind, it seems, was finally gratis to convey its most outlandish ideas to mechanical life. Looking back, Shannon summed it all upward equally happily pointless: “I’ve ever pursued my interests without much regard to fiscal value or value to the world. I’ve spent lots of fourth dimension on totally useless things.” Tellingly, he made no distinction betwixt his interests inwards information as well as his interests inwards unicycles; they were all moves inwards the same game.
One professor, Hermann Haus, remembered a lecture of his that Shannon attended. “I was just so impressed,” Haus recalled, “he was really variety as well as asked leading questions. In fact, i of those questions led to an entire novel chapter inwards a mass I was writing.”
He was non the sort of individual who would give a class as well as say “this was the essence of such as well as such.” He would say, “Last night, I was looking at this as well as I came upward alongside this interesting way of looking at it.” He’d say
Shannon became a whetstone for others’ ideas as well as intuitions. Rather than offering answers, he asked probing questions; instead of solutions, he gave approaches. As Larry Roberts, a graduate pupil of that time, remembered, “Shannon’s favorite thing to do was to hear to what yous had to say as well as so just say, ‘What about...’ as well as so follow alongside an approach yous hadn’t thought of. That’s how he gave his advice.” This was how Shannon preferred to teach: equally a swain traveler as well as work solver, just equally eager equally his students to discovery a novel route or a fresh approach to a standing puzzle.
Even alongside his aversion to writing things down, the famous attic stuffed alongside half-finished work, as well as countless hypotheses circulating inwards his mind—and fifty-fifty when i newspaper on the scale of his “Mathematical Theory of Communication” would have got counted equally a lifetime’s accomplishment—Shannon nonetheless managed to issue hundreds of pages’ worth of papers as well as memoranda, many of which opened novel lines of research inwards information theory. That he had also written seminal works inwards other fields—switching, cryptography, chess programming—and that he mightiness have got been a pathbreaking geneticist, had he cared to be, was extraordinary.
Stock market
By so the identify unit of measurement had no demand of the additional income from stock picking. Not only was at that spot the combination of the MIT as well as Bell Labs pay, but Shannon had been on the Earth flooring of a number of engineering companies. One old colleague, Bill Harrison, had encouraged Shannon to invest inwards his company, Harrison Laboratories, which was later on acquired past times Hewlett-Packard. A college friend of Shannon, Henry Singleton, pose Shannon on the board of the companionship he created, Teledyne, which grew to go a multibillion-dollar conglomerate. As Shannon retold the story, he made the investment simply because “I had a practiced sentiment of him.”The guild benefited from Shannon equally well, inwards his roles equally network node as well as informal consultant. For instance, when Teledyne received an acquisition offering from a spoken communication recognition company, Shannon advised Singleton to plough it down. From his ain experience at the Labs, he doubted that spoken communication recognition would behave fruit anytime soon: the engineering was inwards its early on stages, as well as during his fourth dimension at the Labs, he’d seen much fourth dimension as well as liberate energy fruitlessly sunk into it. The years of counsel paid off, for Singleton as well as for Shannon himself: his investment inwards Teledyne achieved an annual chemical compound render of 27 per centum over twenty-five years.
The stock marketplace was, inwards some ways, the strangest of Shannon’s late-life enthusiasms. One of the recurrent tropes of recollections from identify unit of measurement as well as friends is Shannon’s seeming indifference to money. By i telling, Shannon moved his life savings out of his checking concern human relationship only when Betty insisted that he do so. A colleague recalled seeing a large uncashed cheque on Shannon’s desk at MIT, which inwards fourth dimension gave rising to some other legend: that his role was flood alongside checks he was besides absentminded to cash. In a way, Shannon’s involvement inwards coin resembled his other passions. He was non out to accrue wealth for wealth’s sake, nor did he have got whatever burning wishing to ain the finer things inwards life. But coin created markets as well as math puzzles, problems that could live analyzed as well as interpreted as well as played out.
0 Response to "Book Review. A Hear At Play: How Claude Shannon Invented The Data Age"
Post a Comment