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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
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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
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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
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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
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- 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
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- By: Jim Baggott
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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
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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
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- By: David Lindley
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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
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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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BRUTAL
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Not appropriate for audio-only
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Not bad, but...
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Not appropriate for audio-only
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very enjoyable and informative
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I'm giving this book more credit for its concept
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I wanted more information about Information Theory
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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.
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What listeners say about The Information
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Roger
- 06-07-11
Nerd Heaven
This is everything that every computer nerd should know. All of the background stories may not be interesting, but you are going to hear them anyway.
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- Joshua Kim
- 06-10-12
Gleicking "The Information"
Gleick
verb, Gleick'd, Gleicking
to synthesize large amounts of information and present in an informative, educational and enjoyable format
to connect theories and ideas across disciplines with historical developments
to write artfully about the intersection between science, history and ideas for a popular audience
Reading James Gleick's masterful new book, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (Random House), it seems eminently reasonable to propose a new word based on his name.
Gleick's ambitions in The Information are not modest. They are nothing less than a biography of the discipline of information science. Examining, or rather interrogating, the idea of information must have seemed daunting. Where to start, where to end, what to include, what to leave out? This challenge would have stopped most authors, or every other author, before a project like this could commence. In Gleick's hands, the story of information moves from noise to signal, from a subject too big to comprehend to one with a narrative, protagonists, narrative arc, and an unstoppable forward momentum.
From African drumming to Web, Gleick demonstrates how our understanding of what information is has evolved with our material and intellectual cultures. It moves from the early scientists who first defined, quantified and measured information, to the companies that built industrial empires on bits and bytes rather than steel. The Information is a terrific companion to 2010's best work of nonfiction, Tim Wu's The Master Switch. The chapters in both books about the rise of the telegraph and the influence of Bell labs are alone worth the price of admission.
The Information will be one of the top 5 books of 2011. Computer scientists and historians of science will be (or should be) working this book into syllabuses. Invite Gleick to campus, ask him to keynote your conference, give The Information to the humans around you that carry around your favorite brains.
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- Pablo
- 09-10-17
Engaging but with some innacuracies
Any additional comments?
Some of the things in the book about how the Chinese language works seem to be inaccurate. I'm no linguist so all I can do is to refer you to my sources at the end.
- Knowledge about Mandarin does not automatically allow you to read Cantonese even when the symbols are similar.
- He mentions the transition from pictographic to ideographic to logographic but I was left with the idea that Chinese is still ideographic but it is not. Chinese does not work by capturing ideas or meaning.
These inaccuracies are not fatal to the book's intent but I think they should be pointed out nevertheless.
References:
> Writing and Civilization: From Ancient Worlds to Modernity, Episode 5. A logosyllabic Script http://a.co/cWt24dN
> The answer to these questions is no. Chinese characters are a phonetic, not an ideographic, system of writing, as I have attempted to show in the preceding pages. http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html
> The term "ideogram" is often used to describe symbols of writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sumerian cuneiform and Chinese characters. However, these symbols are logograms, representing words or morphemes of a particular language rather than objects or concepts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideogram
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- Xopowo
- 08-12-15
Profound and outstanding knowledge
There are only tei books in the last 5 years that help understand whhere we are and where we may be headed: What Technology Wants, and The Information.
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- findley
- 01-04-12
must read
Where does The Information rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
it ranks among the best books I have read through audible or any other source of late.
What did you like best about this story?
James Gliek brings alive a topic that in any other hands could be as dull aas dish water. The way we comprehend the world is an evolving work in progress from the revolution of moveable print to computers and the perception thatthe universe is actually a product of information.
The author's style and presentation makes clear difficult subjects and is understandable ideas for even a ludite like myself . The book is filled with the people that created lut modern society. Be prepared to enjoy, but also to have your mind stretched.
What’s the most interesting tidbit you’ve picked up from this book?
Lord Byron's daughter was actually one of the first computer programs who worked with Babage on the first mechanical computer.
Any additional comments?
The reader is required if he is to get the most out of this book to pay attention as some of it is heavy going.
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- Schnauzer
- 03-30-20
Too much information in a few chapters.
Some chapters could be simplified. I might still buy the hard copy for my library.
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-12-19
A MUST read: One of the Greatest
I should had read this book 10 years ago. The subject must be understood for everybody on this millennium. The historical recollection is also very good. The importance of the subject in physics, philosophy, economics, sociology is maybe boundless.
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- Robert Burns
- 04-07-15
Well read accessible history of communication
Glick writes lucidly on a complex subject. He captures the human story of conceiving and developing the technology of communication.
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- Kindle Customer
- 01-31-13
Great book, great narrator
What about Rob Shapiro’s performance did you like?
I listen to a lot of audiobooks, mostly nonfiction. I don't usually post reviews, but I appreciated Rob Shapiros narration so much, I wanted to post something.
A lot of narrators over-dramatize the text. Or the way they read a sentence makes me think they didn't exactly get what the sentence means. Normally I think of narrators as a sort of necessary evil - an extra voice between the author's words and my ears, and I think the best thing a narrator can do is make themselves sort of disappear from the experience, and not get in the way too much.
Rob Shapiro's reading of The Information is the first time I've felt that the narrator actually made the book *better*. His reading was really great - he bring just enough drama to the story, and the way he uses emphasis, changes of speed, etc, made the book more interesting and exciting without feeling distracting. It felt like he had a really great grasp of the text. His reading of this book changed my thinking about how nonfiction books can be narrated.
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- anita bender
- 07-10-21
Another must read.
A networked narrative of the discovery, use, theories, history, and future of humans and information.
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