James Gleick
James Gleick
James Gleickis an American author, historian of science, and sometime Internet pioneer whose work has chronicled the cultural impact of modern technology. Recognized for illuminating complex subjects through the techniques of narrative nonfiction, he has been called “one of the great science writers of all time.” Gleick's books include the international bestsellers Chaos: Making a New Science and The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. Three of them have been Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalists; and The...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth1 August 1954
CountryUnited States of America
running long stories
Every new medium transforms the nature of human thought. In the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of itself.
brain distribution amount
It is not the amount of knowledge that makes a brain. It is not even the distribution of knowledge. It is the interconnectedness.
change time understanding
One of the ways the telegraph changed us as humans was it gave us a new sense of what time it is. It gave us an understanding of simultaneity. It gave us the ability to synchronize clocks from one place to another. It made it possible for the world to have standard time and time zones and then Daylight Savings Time and then after that jetlag. All of that is due to the telegraph because, before that, the time was whatever it was wherever you were.
information
Information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom.
stills
I have seen the future, and it is still in the future.
ideas people world
Ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility.
general interested less politics technology
Granted, I'm more interested in technology than most people, and less interested in politics than most. But I don't like to think about categories. I really see myself as a general non-fiction writer.
clocks future history instead joined master modern reality sensation single
For the modern physicist, reality is the whole thing, past and future joined in a single history. The sensation of now is just that, a sensation, and different for everyone. Instead of one master clock, we have clocks in multitudes.
advanced along alphabet billion bits dna genetics human information itself level message resides wonder
The body itself is an information processor. Memory resides not just in brains but in every cell. No wonder genetics bloomed along with information theory. DNA is the quintessential information molecule, the most advanced message processor at the cellular level - an alphabet and a code, 6 billion bits to form a human being.
bound cloth collection covers organized paper printed someday variety
A book is not necessarily made of paper. A book is not necessarily made to be read on a Kindle. A book is a collection of text, organized in one of a variety of ways. You could say that words printed on paper and bound between cloth covers will someday be obsolete. But if and when that day comes, there will still be a thing called books.
aristotle kant spent time wikipedia
It's fair to say that Wikipedia has spent far more time considering the philosophical ramifications of categorization than Aristotle and Kant ever did.
computer digital fifties filled hope magazines maturing newspapers prediction science sixties space unreal weather
The Fifties and Sixties were years of unreal optimism about weather forecasting. Newspapers and magazines were filled with hope for weather science, not just for prediction but for modification and control. Two technologies were maturing together: the digital computer and the space satellite.
engine gone help invented order organize people point reached search wikipedia
Alphabetical order had to be invented to help people organize the first dictionaries. On the other hand, we may have reached a point where alphabetical order has gone obsolete. Wikipedia is ostensibly in alphabetical order, but, when you think about it, it's not in any order at all. You use a search engine to get into it.
became books culture diminished effected good great greatly history literary name oral people transition
A good part of 'The Information' is about the transition from an oral to a literary culture. Books effected such a great transformation in the way we think about the world, our history, our logic, mathematics, you name it. I think we would be greatly diminished as a people and as a culture if the book became obsolete.