The Information (James Gleick, 2011)

I have a Master's degree in Library and Information Science. Sometimes I think that the word "library" overwhelmed the other two and that I never gave the study of information theory the attention it deserved. While The Information is not a complete resource, it is an excellent beginning to a large and fascinating body of literature that can only bolster my understanding of the field.

The subtitle is important to the structure of the book: "A History, a Theory, a Flood". Gleick does not explicitly group the chapters in the table of contents, but the structure is clear. The history of information takes readers back to the "talking drums" of Africa, where elaborate messages were sent via drums. This in turn takes us into studies of language, though dictionaries and other methods of compiling language. As the history continues, things get more mathematical, introducing the thought of Newton, Leibniz, Babbage, and Turing. History and theory combine in the figure of Claude Shannon, just the latest in my list of names of great people very few people recognize. Finally, meaning returns with a vengeance to the discussion of information with the rise of Wikipedia and increasingly powerful computers and networks, a.k.a. "The Flood".

In my adult years I've been much more interested in mathematics and languages than I ever was in high school or college, but the damage was done. The middle section of the book frequently went over my head. The disassociation of meaning with information was hard for me to follow, though I knew enough to understand the ideas raised were profound. When the book moved to "flood" stage, however, I was back on board for the remainder of the ride. I came away from the book appreciating the recent, rapid shift from "information poverty" to "information overload". I also have a much greater appreciation for the role I play as a librarian during these unprecedented times.