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A Mind at Play

How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
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.
Now, Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman bring Claude Shannon's story to life. It's the story of a small-town boy from Michigan whose career stretched from the age of room-sized computers powered by gears and string to the age of the Apple desktop. It's the story of the origins of information in the tunnels of MIT and the "idea factory" of Bell Labs, in the "scientists' war" with Nazi Germany, and in the work of Shannon's collaborators and rivals. It's the story of Shannon's life as an often reclusive, always playful genius. With access to Shannon's family and friends, A Mind At Play explores the life and times of this singular innovator and creative genius.
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    • AudioFile Magazine
      Jonathan Yen's confident, well-paced narration is ideal for this biography of Claude Shannon, the father of the Information Age. In 1948, Shannon awakened the world to information theory, the concept that all information can be quantified, stored, and transmitted in binary digits or "bits" (a breakthrough that makes possible the downloading of this audiobook, among other things). Narrating in a tone that combines authority and warmth, Yen mirrors Shannon's kindhearted genius; he was a man who opened the gates of the digital age but would just as soon talk about unicycles or his flame-throwing trumpet. Described by one colleague as "Lewis Carroll crossed with Albert Einstein," Shannon was well known for his legendary digressions: He built a calculator based on Roman numerals ("Throbac"), learned to juggle (and wrote a scientific paper on the subject), spent eight months working on a system that could predict a roulette wheel's outcome (and devised the first handheld computer in the process), played the stock market religiously, and tinkered with many whimsical creations that became the touchstones for artificial intelligence and robotics. What can one person accomplish when a playful scientific curiosity is unleashed? This well-produced audiobook has the answer. R.W.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 1, 2017
      A key figure in the development of digital technology has his achievements, if not his personality, burnished in this enlightening biography. Journalists Soni and Goodman, authors of Rome’s Last Citizen, explore Claude Shannon’s breakthroughs as a scientist at MIT and Bell Labs in the 1930s and ’40s in electronics and telecommunications. His noteworthy discoveries include a way to rationally design circuits using Boolean algebra, and information theory, which understands communications as bits and shows how to compress them and remove noise—methods that underlie DVDs, the Internet, and much else. The authors’ rundown of the science behind these advances, probing everything from the structure of language to the transatlantic telegraph, is lucid and fascinating. Unfortunately, Shannon’s retiring demeanor and uneventful life don’t make for a dramatic narrative. The authors’ interpretation that Shannon’s mental “playfulness” stimulated his scientific creativity also seems misconstrued: his serious accomplishments were achieved before the age of 33, when he was working at assigned tasks; during his later life he pursued various interests—whimsical robots, chess-playing machines, a scientific study of juggling—but achieved nothing noteworthy. Still, Soni and Goodman open an engrossing window onto what a mind hard at work can do. Agent: Laura Yorke, Carol Mann Agency.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

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