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The Information
- A History, a Theory, a Flood
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 16 hrs and 37 mins
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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.
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- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Under the aegis of machine learning in our data-driven machine age, computers are programming themselves and learning about - and solving - an extraordinary range of problems, from the mundane to the most daunting. Today it is machine learning programs that enable Amazon and Netflix to predict what users will like, Apple to power Siri's ability to understand voices, and Google to pilot cars.
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Great book, irritating narration
- By N. G. PEPIN on 09-24-15
By: Pedro Domingos
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Is God a Mathematician?
- By: Mario Livio
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner once wondered about "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" in the formulation of the laws of nature. Is God a Mathematician? investigates why mathematics is as powerful as it is. From ancient times to the present, scientists and philosophers have marveled at how such a seemingly abstract discipline could so perfectly explain the natural world. More than that - mathematics has often made predictions, for example, about subatomic particles or cosmic phenomena that were unknown at the time, but later were proven to be true.
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Origins of Mathematics
- By Rick B on 07-08-21
By: Mario Livio
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Undeniable
- How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed
- By: Douglas Axe
- Narrated by: Neil Hellegers
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout his distinguished and unconventional career, engineer-turned-molecular-biologist Douglas Axe has been asking the questions that much of the scientific community would rather silence. Now, he presents his conclusions in this brave and pioneering book. Axe argues that the key to understanding our origin is the "design intuition" - the innate belief held by all humans that tasks we would need knowledge to accomplish can be accomplished only by someone who has that knowledge.
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Seductively Challenge what are consider facts
- By Rafael Vila on 10-08-16
By: Douglas Axe
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The Invention of Science
- A New History of the Scientific Revolution
- By: David Wootton
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 22 hrs and 5 mins
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In this fascinating history spanning continents and centuries, historian David Wootton offers a lively defense of science, revealing why the Scientific Revolution was truly the greatest event in our history. The Invention of Science goes back 500 years in time to chronicle this crucial transformation, exploring the factors that led to its birth and the people who made it happen. Wootton argues that the Scientific Revolution was actually five separate yet concurrent events that developed independently.
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A Good Read Spoiled
- By David A. Donnelly on 12-23-16
By: David Wootton
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Time Travel
- A History
- By: James Gleick
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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James Gleick's story begins at the turn of the 20th century, with the young H. G. Wells writing and rewriting the fantastic tale that became his first book, an international sensation: The Time Machine. A host of forces were converging to transmute the human understanding of time, some philosophical and some technological - the electric telegraph, the steam railroad, the discovery of buried civilizations, and the perfection of clocks.
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Fiction gives us Truth by connecting the dots
- By Gary on 04-21-17
By: James Gleick
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The Story of Western Science
- From the Writings of Aristotle to the Big Bang Theory
- By: Susan Wise Bauer
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Far too often, public discussion of science is carried out by journalists, voters, and politicians who have received their science secondhand. The Story of Western Science shows us the joy and importance of reading groundbreaking science writing for ourselves and guides us back to the masterpieces that have changed the way we think about our world, our cosmos, and ourselves.
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Good text, tedious book structure
- By Diane K. on 10-07-15
By: Susan Wise Bauer
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A Beginner’s Guide to Reality
- Exploring Our Everyday Adventures in Wonderland
- By: Jim Baggott
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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A unique fusion of philosophy and metaphysics set against the backdrop of contemporary culture. Have you ever wondered if the world is really there when you're not looking? We tend to take the reality of our world very much for granted. This book will lead you down the rabbit hole in search of something we can point to, hang our hats on, and say this is real.
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A real great listen on the nature of reality
- By Patrick Mabry, Jr. on 07-30-14
By: Jim Baggott
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The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
- The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman
- By: Richard P. Feynman
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
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The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a magnificent treasury of the best short works of Richard P. Feynman, from interviews and speeches to lectures and printed articles. A sweeping, wide-ranging collection, it presents an intimate and fascinating view of a life in science - a life like no other. From his ruminations on science in our culture to his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, this book will delight anyone interested in the world of ideas.
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Interesting, but material is covered in better book.
- By Erlend on 04-06-16
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Uncertainty
- Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science
- By: David Lindley
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
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Werner Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle" challenged centuries of scientific understanding, placed him in direct opposition to Albert Einstein, and put Niels Bohr in the middle of one of the most heated debates in scientific history. Heisenberg's theorem stated that there were physical limits to what we could know about sub-atomic particles; this "uncertainty" would have shocking implications.
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fascinating insight into the real drama of physics
- By Ryan on 09-07-10
By: David Lindley
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On Intelligence
- By: Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee
- Narrated by: Jeff Hawkins, Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
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Jeff Hawkins, the man who created the PalmPilot, Treo smart phone, and other handheld devices, has reshaped our relationship to computers. Now he stands ready to revolutionize both neuroscience and computing in one stroke, with a new understanding of intelligence itself.
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Epiphany
- By James on 03-14-05
By: Jeff Hawkins, and others
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Not bad, but...
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From the author of the national best seller Chaos comes an outstanding biography of one of the most dazzling and flamboyant scientists of the 20th century that "not only paints a highly attractive portrait of Feynman but also . . . makes for a stimulating adventure in the annals of science." ( The New York Times).
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Ok, that's the last straw...Dess Carts?
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Isaac Newton
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James Gleick has long been fascinated by the making of science: how ideas order visible appearances, how equations can give meaning to molecular and stellar phenomena, how theories can transform what we see. In Chaos, he chronicled the emergence of a new way of looking at dynamic systems; in Genius, he portrayed the wondrous dimensions of Richard Feymnan's mind.
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BRUTAL
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The Science of Information: From Language to Black Holes
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The Science of Information: From Language to Black Holes covers the exciting concepts, history, and applications of information theory in 24 challenging and eye-opening half-hour lectures taught by Professor Benjamin Schumacher of Kenyon College. A prominent physicist and award-winning educator at one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges, Professor Schumacher is also a pioneer in the field of quantum information, which is the latest exciting development in this dynamic scientific field.
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Not appropriate for audio-only
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By: Benjamin Schumacher, and others
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Behind the familiar surfaces of the telephone, radio, and television lies a sophisticated and intriguing body of knowledge known as information theory. This is the theory that has permitted the rapid development of all sorts of communication, from color television to the clear transmission of photographs from the vicinity of Jupiter. Even more revolutionary progress is expected in the future.
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Not bad, but...
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From the author of the national best seller Chaos comes an outstanding biography of one of the most dazzling and flamboyant scientists of the 20th century that "not only paints a highly attractive portrait of Feynman but also . . . makes for a stimulating adventure in the annals of science." ( The New York Times).
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Ok, that's the last straw...Dess Carts?
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Not appropriate for audio-only
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You won't learn anything you didn't know
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Past it's prime
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Needed an editor
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Biographies, not technical
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very enjoyable and informative
- By Christopher Smith, Esq. on 08-28-23
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One Day
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On New Year’s Day 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Gene Weingarten asked three strangers to, literally, pluck a day, month, and year from a hat. That day - chosen completely at random - was Sunday, December 28, 1986, by any conventional measure a most ordinary day. Weingarten spent the next six years proving that there is no such thing. That Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s turned out to be filled with comedy, tragedy, implausible irony, cosmic comeuppances, kindness, cruelty, heroism, cowardice, genius, idiocy, and much more....
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I'm giving this book more credit for its concept
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The Master Switch
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Great Read
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Claude Shannon was a tinkerer, a playful wunderkind, a groundbreaking polymath, and a digital pioneer whose insights made the Information Age possible. He constructed fire-breathing trumpets and customized unicycles, outfoxed Vegas casinos, and built juggling robots, but he also wrote the seminal text of the Digital Revolution. That work allowed scientists to measure and manipulate information as objectively as any physical object. His work gave mathematicians and engineers the tools to bring that world to pass.
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I wanted more information about Information Theory
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What is economic growth? And why, historically, has it occurred in only a few places? Previous efforts to answer these questions have focused on institutions, geography, finances, and psychology. But according to MIT's anti-disciplinarian César Hidalgo, understanding the nature of economic growth demands transcending the social sciences and including the natural sciences of information, networks, and complexity. To understand the growth of economies, Hidalgo argues, we first need to understand the growth of order.
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Great book!
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Does time exist? What is infinity? Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down? In this scintillating collection, Holt explores the human mind, the cosmos, and the thinkers who’ve tried to encompass the latter with the former. With his trademark clarity and humor, Holt probes the mysteries of quantum mechanics, the quest for the foundations of mathematics, and the nature of logic and truth. Along the way, he offers intimate biographical sketches of celebrated and neglected thinkers, from the physicist Emmy Noether to the computing pioneer Alan Turing and the discoverer of fractals, Benoit Mandelbrot.
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A good overview of scientific theory
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The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved
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For thousands of years mathematicians solved progressively more difficult algebraic equations, until they encountered the quintic equation, which resisted solution for three centuries. Working independently, two prodigies ultimately proved that the quintic cannot be solved by a simple formula. The first popular account of the mathematics of symmetry and order, The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved is told not through abstract formulas but in a beautifully written and dramatic account of the lives and work of some of the greatest and most intriguing mathematicians in history.
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Historical Perspective Appreciated
- By Michael Hanrahan on 01-22-20
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Liars and Outliers
- Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive
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When we think about trust, we naturally think about personal relationships or bank vaults. That's too narrow. Trust is much broader, and much more important. Nothing in society works without trust. It's the foundation of communities, commerce, democracy - everything. In this insightful and entertaining book, Schneier weaves together ideas from across the social and biological sciences and technologies to explain how society induces trust.
By: Bruce Schneier
What listeners say about The Information
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Bonnie H. Bennett
- 07-22-13
This is my book of the decade!
Where does The Information rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
This is among the top three (of several hundred).
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Information?
The talking drums stuck with me. I have told that story over and over.
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- tosbanzai
- 12-23-17
Mandatory
Mandatory reading for the modern citizen of this interconnected highly networked ever-expanding world of ours. Plus it’s a fun read :)
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- J W
- 02-24-18
Wonderful
Fascinating and provocatIve, and enhanced by a narrator who clearly understands what he's reading, and its implications.
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- Henry
- 07-14-13
An essential read for today's knowledge worker.
Would you listen to The Information again? Why?
Yes. I found the content and the narration very good. Given the massive scope and content in this book, I was hooked and the narration was something I felt made it easy to listen to for long periods of time. Listening to the book again is needed to get the timeline of key events and people into order. I think IT workers and any knowledge workers would find this book interesting in understanding the history of information and where information management is going.
What did you like best about this story?
The historical characters are brought to life in this book. Even though learning about 'information' may sound boring, this book made it really interesting with all its human stories and conflicts.
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- roxane googin
- 03-12-18
Deeper than Necessary but Interesting
This book is a liberal artists dream in that it leaves no stone unturned It is more like a fine wine to be savored than a source of quick ideas. People in a hurry for a.payoff may get frustrated.
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- Sean Atkinson
- 07-28-22
Expected a bit more
Wanted some deeper insights rather than history, and mispronunciation of some names were frustrating.
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Overall
- Lynn
- 03-29-11
Information in Historical Context
James Gleick in “The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood” seeks to place information in historical context. To accomplish that he opens the book by discussing the advent of drumming, signals, telegraph, telephone and the computer. A most interesting section contains an explanation of how Babbage invented the first computer and how it worked. In the subsequent portion he relates how information theorists worked on the coding, decoding, and re-coding of information. The final chapters link such as DNA , and quantum mechanics to information. It is this last portion of the book that was the most thought provoking for me. This book is wonderful as history, stimulating as philosophy, and a fine introduction to theoretical aspects of the topic. The reading of Rob Shapiro is excellent.
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17 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Peter
- 07-02-11
Changed how I live and work
No other book in recent memory has had such an impact on how I view the world as this one. I really wish that Audible provided some kind of text copy of books you've purchased because I've wanted to go back and reference it many times since I finished it. My only complaint was that I found a few hours of it boring enough to skip over somewhere in the first half.
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13 people found this helpful
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- Andy
- 02-15-12
in the end, it's all information
Fascinating history of information. This book illuminates the enormous amount of information behind everything from the dictionary to the human genome. A good part of the book discussed the data that supports many of the laws of physics...most of which went totally over my head. The narration was terrific, which kept me listening even when I struggled to grasp what was being discussed.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Logan Calendine
- 07-15-19
Great, but over-technical at times
Great book, the first few chapters especially were beyond fascinating. At times it could get a tad over-technical for my liking, but it was always fascinating, even when I only understood parts of it.
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