XX26003 Book Summary - The Information by James Gleick V01 180126

 Decision to start from Chapter 7 since the earlier chapters were essentially historical in content not generating as many insights as these later chapters. As always if this AI generated summary fires your interest I recommend you look to purchase secondhand “The Information” by James Gleick (2011). ISBN 9780007225736. 527 pp. Banno

Chapter 7 Information Theory

In Chapter 7, titled "The Information Theory," Gleick brings us to the heart of the book: the 1948 publication of Claude Shannon’s "A Mathematical Theory of Communication." This chapter marks the moment "Information" transitioned from a vague concept to a rigorous, measurable branch of science.

The Problem of the "Channel"

Gleick begins by setting the stage at Bell Labs in the 1940s. The world was full of communication devices—telephones, radios, and telegraphs—but engineers struggled with "noise" and distance. Shannon’s breakthrough was to ignore the meaning of the message entirely. To an engineer, it doesn't matter if a phone call is a Shakespearean sonnet or a grocery list; it is simply a string of symbols that must be transmitted accurately.Defining the "Bit".

Gleick explains how Shannon popularized the word "bit" (binary digit), a term suggested by his colleague John Tukey. Shannon defined information as a choice between two equally likely possibilities: Yes or No, 0 or 1. Measuring Information: The more "surprising" a message is, the more information it contains.

Unpredictability: If you know exactly what someone is going to say, the "information content" of their message is zero. If their message is completely unpredictable, the information content is high.

The Concept of Redundancy

A major portion of this chapter is dedicated to Shannon’s analysis of the English language. Gleick describes how Shannon calculated that English is about 50% redundant. We use more letters than necessary (like the 'u' that always follows 'q') to ensure the message survives "noise."

• Because we know the patterns of our language, we can often reconstruct a garbled sentence.

• This redundancy is what allows us to understand a crackly phone line or a smudged letter.

Information as Entropy

Perhaps the most shocking part of the chapter is when Shannon introduces Entropy. He used the same mathematical formula that physicists used to measure disorder in thermodynamics.

• In physics, entropy is the measure of a system's disorder.

• In information theory, entropy is the measure of a message’s uncertainty.

 Gleick notes that by linking these two, Shannon suggested that information is a fundamental physical property of the universe, just like matter or energy.

The Impact

Gleick concludes the chapter by describing the "explosion" of Shannon’s theory. It didn't just stay in telecommunications; it leaked into biology, psychology, and linguistics. It provided the world with a "universal currency" for all forms of communication.

Chapter 8 Informational Turn

In Chapter 8, titled "The Information Refugee," Gleick focuses on the intersection of cryptography (code-breaking) and Information Theory during World War II. While Chapter 7 established the math, Chapter 8 shows that math in action as a weapon of war.

The Secret Life of Claude Shannon

Gleick reveals that while Shannon was developing his "Mathematical Theory of Communication," he was also working for the U.S. government on cryptographic systems. He was tasked with making the "Green Hornet"—the secure telephone line used by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt—unbreakable.

Cryptography as Information Theory

The chapter explains Shannon's brilliant realization: Enciphering a message is essentially the same as transmitting it.  Noise vs. Encryption: In communication, "noise" is accidental interference. In cryptography, the "key" is intentional interference.

The "One-Time Pad": Shannon mathematically proved that the only truly unbreakable code is the "one-time pad," where the key is as long as the message and used only once. This is because it provides zero information to the enemy; every possible translation is equally likely.

Alan Turing and the Meeting of Minds

A highlight of this chapter is the 1943 meeting between Claude Shannon and Alan Turing at Bell Labs. Turing had traveled from Bletchley Park in the UK to coordinate on speech encryption.

Gleick notes the irony: because of intense wartime secrecy, they couldn't talk about their specific work (Turing's work on the Enigma or Shannon's work on the Mathematical Theory). Instead, they sat in the cafeteria discussing the future of "thinking machines" and whether a computer could ever mimic a human brain.

Redundancy and the "A" in Cryptanalysis

Gleick explains how code-breakers use redundancy (which we saw in Chapter 7) to crack ciphers. Because human languages are not random—letters like 'E' and 'T' appear more often

 than others—a code-breaker looks for patterns. Shannon’s math allowed cryptanalysts to calculate exactly how much "ciphertext" they needed to intercept before a code could be broken (the Unicity Distance).

The Scientific Aftermath

By the end of the chapter, the war is over, and the secrecy is lifted. Shannon's work is finally published in 1948. Gleick describes how the world was finally ready to accept that "Information" was a quantifiable thing. The "Information Refugee" (the secret knowledge of wartime) was now out in the open, ready to spark the digital revolution.

Chapter 9 Entropy and Its Demons

In Chapter 9 of The Information, titled "Entropy and Its Demons," James Gleick explores the deep, often counterintuitive connection between the physical world of thermodynamics and the abstract world of information.

The Problem of Entropy

Gleick begins by revisiting the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that in a closed system, entropy (a measure of disorder) always increases. He explains how 19th-century physicists, like Rudolf Clausius and Ludwig Boltzmann, realized that energy tends to dissipate and systems naturally move toward a state of equilibrium or "heat death."

However, this physical concept of entropy took on a new life when it collided with information. Gleick describes how entropy isn't just about heat; it is about uncertainty. If a system is highly ordered, we have a lot of information about it. If it is disordered (high entropy), we have very little.

Maxwell’s Demon

A central figure in this chapter is Maxwell’s Demon, a thought experiment proposed by James Clerk Maxwell in 1867. Maxwell imagined a tiny, intelligent creature controlling a door between two chambers of gas. By opening and closing the door to let fast molecules into one side and slow molecules into the other, the demon could decrease entropy without doing any "work"—seemingly defying the Second Law.

Gleick uses the Demon to illustrate a profound realization: the Demon's ability to sort molecules depends on its ability to possess information. For decades, scientists struggled to explain why the Demon couldn't actually work. The solution, Gleick notes, finally came from realizing that the Demon must record information about the molecules, and the eventual act of erasing that information to make room for more generates enough heat (and entropy) to satisfy the Second Law.

Claude Shannon and Information Entropy

The chapter then bridges the gap to the 20th century, where Claude Shannon repurposed the word "entropy" for his Information Theory. Shannon realized that the "information content" of a message is mathematically equivalent to its entropy.

• High Entropy = High Information: If a message is unpredictable and surprising, it contains more information.

• Low Entropy = Low Information: If a message is highly predictable (like "the the the"), it contains very little information.

Gleick highlights the irony that shocked the world: "information," which we usually associate with order and meaning, is mathematically identical to the "disorder" of thermodynamics.

The Physics of Information

Gleick concludes by arguing that information is not just an abstract concept used by humans to communicate; it is a physical property of the universe. By linking the Demon, the steam engine, and the bit, he shows that processing information has a physical cost. This chapter marks the moment in the book where "the bit" becomes as fundamental to reality as the atom or the joule.

Chapter 10 Life’s Own Code

To go deeper into Chapter 10, we have to look at the "Digital Physics" of life. Gleick argues that the discovery of DNA wasn't just a win for biology; it was the ultimate vindication of Information Theory.

Here is a deeper dive into the three pillars of that transition: 

1. The Schrödinger Prediction: Life as a "Code-Script"

Before the structure of DNA was known, physicist Erwin Schrödinger posited that life must be governed by an "aperiodic crystal." Most crystals in nature (like salt) are repetitive and boring—they don't "say" anything. But life, he argued, must be a crystal where the atoms are arranged in a specific, non-repetitive sequence that carries a message.

Gleick explains that this shifted the search for the "secret of life" away from looking for a special kind of energy and toward looking for a data storage device.

2. The Alphabet of Life (Base-4)

When Watson and Crick found the double helix, they found a Quaternary (Base-4) system. While computers use a binary system (0 and 1), biology uses A, C, G, and T.

• Storage: The sequence of these bases determines everything from the colour of your eyes to the timing of your heartbeat.

• Redundancy: Just like the "talking drums" used extra words to ensure the message was clear, DNA uses redundancy. Many different "triplets" (codons) of DNA code for the same amino acid. This "error-correction" ensures that if a small mutation occurs, the protein might still be built correctly.

3. The "Selfish" Perspective: Information as the Master

Gleick leans heavily on the shift in perspective popularized by Richard Dawkins. In this "information-first" view, the hierarchy of life is flipped:

• The Body: A temporary, mortal "survival machine."

• The Gene: An immortal, digital packet of information.

The atoms in your body are replaced every few years; you are not the "stuff" you are made of. You are the pattern that remains. Gleick quotes the idea that "a hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg." In Information Theory terms, an organism is just a medium used by a message to replicate itself.

4. The Invention of "Memes"

Gleick concludes this deep dive by moving from the Gene to the Meme. If information can replicate using chemistry (DNA), it can also replicate using mind-space (Ideas).

• Virality: A catchy tune or a religious belief acts exactly like a biological virus. It "infects" a host (a brain), uses that host's resources to make copies of itself (by humming the tune or preaching the belief), and spreads to the next host.

• Survival of the Fittest: Ideas don't survive because they are "true"; they survive because they are good at being transmitted.

Chapter 11 Into the Meme Pool

In Chapter 11, titled "Into the Meme Pool," Gleick explores the logical conclusion of the "information-first" worldview: if life is just a vehicle for genetic information, then human culture is a vehicle for a new kind of replicator—the meme.

The Birth of the Meme

Gleick focuses heavily on the work of Richard Dawkins, who coined the term "meme" in 1976. The word was derived from the Greek mimeme (something imitated) but designed to sound like "gene."

 The central argument is that evolution isn't limited to biology. It applies to anything that exhibits variation, heredity, and selection.

• Variation: Ideas change as they move from person to person.

• Heredity: We pass ideas down through language, books, and rituals.

 • Selection: Some ideas "catch on" while others are forgotten.

The Information Parasite

Gleick challenges the reader to think of a meme—a catchy jingle, a fashion trend, or a religious dogma—as a living entity. Just as a virus hijacks the machinery of a cell to make copies of itself, a meme hijacks the human brain.

He notes that a meme's success isn't determined by its truth or its benefit to the host. A "successful" meme is simply one that is good at replicating. For example, a "chain letter" or a viral conspiracy theory survives not because it is helpful, but because it contains instructions to "pass this on."

The "Meme Pool" and Competition

Gleick describes the human mind as a limited resource—a "soup" where memes compete for attention. In this ecosystem:

• Co-adaptation: Certain memes thrive together (like "heaven" and "hell" or "nationalism" and "flags").

• Host Defense: Our brains develop "immune systems" to reject certain memes (like skepticism or logic), while other memes develop "hooks" to bypass those defenses (like emotional appeals).

Cultural Evolution vs. Biological Evolution

The chapter highlights a terrifying shift: speed. Biological evolution takes millions of years to change a species. Memetic evolution takes seconds. Gleick argues that we have reached a point where cultural evolution has outpaced our biological evolution. We are ancient biological hardware running incredibly fast, modern cultural software.

The Summary

Chapter 11 marks the transition from the physical "bit" to the psychological "bit." Gleick concludes that we are not just "survival machines" for our genes, but also "imitation machines" for our memes. We don't just have ideas; often, ideas have us.

 In Chapter 12, titled "The Sense of Flood," Gleick explores the psychological and social consequences of living in an age of information overload. While earlier chapters focused on the mechanics of information, this chapter focuses on the experience of it.

The Historical Cycle of Overload

Gleick begins by pointing out a surprising truth: the feeling of being "overwhelmed" by information is not a new phenomenon. Every time a new information technology was invented, humans panicked:

• The Printing Press: Scholars in the 15th Century complained that there were too many books to read and that the quality of knowledge was being diluted.

• The Telegraph: In the 19th century, people worried that the constant stream of "news" from far-off places was causing mental exhaustion.

• The Library: Gleick uses the metaphor of Borges’s "Library of Babel"—a fictional library containing every possible book. Because the library contains everything, it effectively contains nothing useful, leading its inhabitants to despair.

The Transition from Scarcity to Surplus

The core of the chapter describes a fundamental shift in the human condition. For most of history, information was scarce. People traveled for days to hear a single lecture or see a single manuscript.

In the digital age, we have moved into a state of permanent surplus. Gleick argues that we no longer "search" for information; instead, we are "flooded" by it. The challenge is no longer accessing the bits, but filtering them.

The Burden of Choice

Gleick discusses the work of psychologist Herbert Simon, who famously noted that "a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention."

• Attention as the New Currency: In an age of infinite bits, human attention becomes the rarest and most valuable resource.

• The Death of Context: When information is broken down into small, rapid-fire bits (like headlines or tweets), we lose the "glue" that connects facts into a coherent narrative. We know a lot of things, but we understand less.

Summary: The Information Paradox

Gleick concludes that the "Flood" has changed our relationship with truth. When there is too much information, it becomes easier for "noise" and misinformation to hide in plain sight. We are left with the Information Paradox: we have more data than any generation in history, yet we feel more uncertain than ever before.

Would you like me to summarize Chapter 13, which looks at the specific technologies (like Wikipedia and Google) that we built to try and manage this flood?

In Chapter 13, titled "The New News," Gleick examines the tools and cultural shifts we created to survive the "Flood" described in the previous chapter. He focuses on how the traditional roles of "author" and "editor" have been demolished by the digital age.

The Death of the Gatekeeper

Gleick begins by contrasting the old world of "The News" with the new world of "Information." In the past, newspapers and encyclopedias acted as gatekeepers. Editors decided what was important enough to be printed.

In the digital era, everyone is a publisher. Gleick describes the rise of Wikipedia as a central example of this shift.

• Bottom-Up Knowledge: Instead of a small group of experts (like the Encyclopædia Britannica), Wikipedia relies on the "wisdom of the crowd."

• The Process vs. The Product: He points out that Wikipedia is never "finished." It is a living, breathing document where the "truth" is constantly being negotiated in real-time.

The Rise of the Search Engine

As the volume of information became too large for any human to navigate, we turned to algorithms. Gleick explores the impact of Google and the concept of PageRank.

• Relevance over Truth: Search engines don't necessarily tell you what is "true"; they tell you what is "relevant" based on how many other people have linked to it.

• The "Index" is the Library: In the past, you went to a library to find a book. Now, the index (the search engine) is the primary way we interact with reality. If it isn't searchable, it effectively doesn't exist.

The Fragmentation of Truth

Gleick discusses how the "New News" is characterized by speed and brevity. Information is broken down into "nuggets" or "feeds."

• Loss of Narrative: Because we consume information in fragments, we lose the broader context. We see the "what" but rarely the "why."

 • Echo Chambers: He touches on the idea that because we have so much choice, we tend to gravitate toward information that confirms our existing beliefs, further fragmenting society into different "realities."

Summary: From Authority to Participation

The chapter concludes by arguing that we have moved from a culture of authority (where we believe what we are told by experts) to a culture of participation (where we help create and filter the information ourselves). While this is democratic, it places a massive cognitive burden on the individual to distinguish signal from noise.

In Chapter 14, titled "New News Everyday," Gleick explores how the digital "flood" has fundamentally altered our perception of time, presence, and the nature of human experience. He moves from the history of technology to the sociology of the modern individual.

The Accelerating Clock

Gleick argues that information technology has compressed time. In the era of the telegraph, "news" was something that happened yesterday. In the digital era, news is synchronous—it happens now.

• The Death of Delay: Historically, the time it took for information to travel allowed for reflection and processing. Today, that buffer is gone.

• The "Continuous Present": We live in a state where the past is instantly accessible (through archives) and the future is constantly being predicted (through data), leaving us in a frantic, high-velocity "now."

The "Always-On" Society

A major theme in this chapter is the transition from communication as an event to communication as a state of being.

• Ubiquity: We no longer "go online"; we are always online. Gleick describes how devices have become extensions of our nervous systems.

• Presence: He notes the paradox of being physically present in one room while mentally participating in a digital conversation halfway across the world. This "split-screen" existence has changed the way we socialise and work.

The Datafication of the Self

Gleick discusses how we have begun to view our own lives as streams of information.

• Quantified Self: We track our steps, our sleep, and our heart rates, turning biological experience into digital data.

 • Digital Footprints: Our memories are no longer just in our heads; they are stored in "the cloud." Gleick reflects on the fact that for the first time in history, almost everything we do leaves a permanent, searchable record.

The Burden of Omniscience

The chapter touches on the psychological toll of having the world's information in our pockets. Gleick suggests that having access to everything creates a new kind of anxiety—the fear of missing out (FOMO) and the pressure to be constantly "up to date." We are expected to be experts on every global event as it unfolds, which is a cognitive load the human brain was never evolved to handle.

Summary: The New Normal

Gleick concludes that while we have gained "everyday wonders"—the ability to find any fact or contact anyone instantly—we have lost a certain kind of peace. We have traded the depth of slow, focused thought for the breadth of rapid, fragmented bits.

In Chapter 15, the final chapter titled "The Return," Gleick brings the narrative full circle. After traveling through the history of drums, alphabets, logic, and DNA, he reflects on what it means for humanity to live as "information-processing" beings in a universe that may be made of nothing but bits.

The Library Re-visited

Gleick returns to the metaphor of Borges’s Library of Babel. He suggests that we have actually built this infinite library in the form of the Internet. The struggle of the modern age is no longer the collection of information, but the curation of it. In a sea of infinite data, the only thing that gives information value is meaning—which is the one thing the mathematical bits cannot provide on their own.

"It from Bit"

A major philosophical pillar of this chapter is the work of physicist John Archibald Wheeler, who coined the phrase "It from Bit."

• Wheeler proposed that every physical "it"—every particle, every force field—derives its function and its very existence from the answers to yes-or-no questions (bits).

• Gleick explores the mind-bending idea that the universe isn't made of "stuff" (matter and energy), but rather of information. In this view, a black hole or an atom is simply a repository of data.

The Persistence of the Pattern

 Gleick reflects on what this means for human mortality. He argues that if we view ourselves as "information patterns" rather than just physical bodies, we see a different kind of persistence. Our ideas, our genes, and our digital footprints continue to interact with the "Meme Pool" long after our physical forms are gone.

However, he warns that while information is immortal, it is also fragile. As formats change (from floppy disks to the cloud), we face the risk of a "Digital Dark Age" where our records exist but can no longer be read.

The Return to the Beginning

The book concludes with a poetic return to the "talking drums" of Chapter 1. Gleick notes that while our technology has changed—from rhythmic drumbeats to fiber-optic pulses—the human impulse remains identical:

1. The desire to reach out across a distance.

2. The need to overcome silence.

3. The drive to encode our world so that it can be shared. Summary: We are the Information

The final takeaway of The Information is that we are not merely consumers of information; we are information. From the DNA in our cells to the memes in our minds, we are the current vessels for a vast, ancient stream of data that began long before us and will continue long after. We have moved from a world of things to a world of symbols, and in doing so, we have fundamentally redefined what it means to be human.

Here is a summary of the key terms and concepts from The Information, presented as bullet points for quick reference:

Core Scientific Concepts

• The Bit: A "Binary Digit." This is the fundamental unit of information, representing a choice between two equally likely outcomes (0 or 1, Yes or No). It is the "atom" of the digital age.

• Information Entropy: A mathematical measure of uncertainty or "surprisal." If a message is highly predictable, its entropy is low. If it is surprising or random, its entropy is high.

• Redundancy: The "extra" parts of a message that aren't strictly necessary for meaning but help protect it from errors. For example, the "u" after a "q" in English is redundant because we can predict it will be there even if the text is smudged.

• Noise: Any random interference that disturbs a signal, such as static on a phone line or a drumbeat being lost in the wind. Shannon proved that clever coding can overcome noise to deliver a perfect message.

 • The Channel: The medium through which information travels—be it a copper wire, the air, or a strand of DNA. Every channel has a "capacity," a speed limit on how much data it can carry.

Biological and Cultural Concepts

• The Gene as Code: The realization that DNA is not just a chemical, but a digital instruction manual. It uses a base-four alphabet (A, C, G, T) to store the data required to build a living organism.

• The Meme: A unit of cultural imitation. Just as genes replicate through biology, memes (ideas, catchphrases, melodies) replicate by jumping from brain to brain. They evolve based on which ideas are best at being "remembered" and "shared."

• Information Overload (The Flood): The psychological state where the supply of information exceeds our human capacity to process it. This leads to "the poverty of attention," where we have infinite data but struggle to find meaning.

• The Library of Babel: A metaphor (from Jorge Luis Borges) for a library containing every possible combination of letters. While it contains all truths, it also contains all lies and gibberish, making it a place of chaos rather than wisdom.

Philosophical Perspectives

• "It from Bit": A phrase coined by physicist John Archibald Wheeler. It suggests that at the most fundamental level, the universe is not made of matter or energy, but of information.

• Aperiodic Crystals: A term used by Erwin Schrödinger to describe the hereditary substance (DNA) before it was discovered. He argued that life must be a "code-script" written in a complex, non-repeating structure.

• The Gatekeeper: A person (like an editor or librarian) who traditionally decided what information was valuable enough to be preserved. In the modern era, gatekeepers have been replaced by algorithms and search engines.

The Epilogue, titled "Every Man an Island," serves as James Gleick’s final meditation on the state of humanity in a world that is now permanently saturated with information. While the final chapter looked at the physics and philosophy of bits, the Epilogue looks at the personal and human cost.

The Return of the Individual

The title is a deliberate subversion of John Donne’s famous poem, "No man is an island." Gleick suggests that while we are more connected than ever before—linked by invisible wires and signals—we are paradoxically becoming more isolated.

 • The Digital Cocoon: As we use algorithms to filter the "Flood," we create personalized bubbles. We only see the news we want to see and talk to the people who already agree with us.

• The Loss of Common Ground: When everyone has their own "index" of the world, the shared reality that used to bind societies together begins to dissolve.

The Fragility of Memory

Gleick reflects on how our relationship with memory has changed.

• Internal vs. External Memory: For millennia, humans had to remember things internally. Now, we "outsource" our memory to the cloud. Gleick wonders if we are losing the ability to think deeply because we are no longer required to store information in our own minds.

• The Permanent Record: In the past, most human talk was "evanescent"—it vanished as soon as it was spoken. Today, every email, text, and search query is recorded. We are the first generation of humans who cannot truly be forgotten, which Gleick notes is a heavy burden.

The Survival of the Pattern

Despite the anxieties of the digital age, Gleick ends on a note of awe. He returns to the central theme of the book: Information is the fabric of reality.

• He argues that while the media change (from drums to parchment to silicon), the human project is always the same: we are trying to leave a trace.

• We are "information-processing machines" that have finally succeeded in building a world that matches our own complexity.

Final Closing Thought

The book concludes with the idea that we are now "the curators of our own lives." In the infinite library of the modern world, the most important task for a human being is no longer to find information, but to decide what to ignore and what to cherish.

Here is a "Cheat Sheet" of the most significant quotes from The Information. These lines capture the essence of James Gleick’s journey from ancient drums to modern bits.

On the Nature of Information

• "The bit is the fundamental particle of a world we are just beginning to understand." — This captures the central theme that the digital bit is as real as an atom.

• "Information is not a thing, but a choice." — A reflection of Claude Shannon's definition: information only exists when there is a selection between multiple possibilities.

 • "Meaning is not the point; the point is the transmission of the message." — Summarizing the cold, mathematical breakthrough that allowed engineers to build the modern internet without worrying about the content of the data.

On Biology and Life

• "The gene is a message. It is a sequence of instructions. It is digital." — Highlighting the shift from viewing life as a "vital spark" to viewing it as a biological computer program.

• "A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg." — (Quoting Samuel Butler) This illustrates the "Selfish Gene" concept: that the physical organism is just a temporary vehicle for the information (the DNA).

• "We are the curating animals." — A reminder that in a world of infinite data, our primary biological and cultural task is choosing what to keep and what to discard.

On the History of Communication

• "Every new medium of communication has been greeted with a mixture of hope and dread." — Pointing out that our modern anxiety about the internet is exactly like the anxiety ancient Greeks felt about writing or the Victorians felt about the telegraph.

• "The transition from the oral to the written was the most significant shift in the history of human consciousness." — Reflecting on how the alphabet allowed us to freeze time and analyze our own thoughts for the first time.

On the Modern "Flood"

• "A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." — (Quoting Herbert Simon) Perhaps the most famous line in the book regarding the modern struggle to focus in a world of constant notifications.

• "We have no choice but to inhabit the library." — A reference to Borges’s Library of Babel, acknowledging that we now live inside an infinite, chaotic archive of everything ever said or thought.

I’ve enjoyed helping you break down this massive work! Is there any other book or complex topic you'd like me to dive into with you?

Here is the full list of chapters from "The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood" by James Gleick:

• Prologue

• Chapter 1: Drums That Talk

• Chapter 2: The Persistence of the Word

 • Chapter 3: Two Wordbooks

• Chapter 4: To Throw the Powers of Thought into Wheel-Work • Chapter 5: A Nervous System for the Earth

• Chapter 6: New Wires, New Languages

• Chapter 7: The Information Theory

• Chapter 8: The Information Refugee

• Chapter 9: Entropy and Its Demons

• Chapter 10: Life’s Own Code

• Chapter 11: Into the Meme Pool

• Chapter 12: The Sense of Flood

• Chapter 13: The New News

• Chapter 14: New News Every Day

• Chapter 15: Every Man an Island (The Return)