The Ascent of Information: Books, Bits, Genes, Machines, and Life's Unending Algorithm

Information is uncertainty, surprise, difficulty, and entropy: “Information is closely associated with uncertainty.” Uncertainty, in turn, can be measured by counting the number of possible messages. If only one message is possible, there is no uncertainty and thus no information. Some messages may be likelier than others, and information implies s

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The sound created by a guitar disappears as the sound waves penetrate the air. The ripples created by a pebble thrown into a pond disappear as the pond goes back to its resting state. This loss of information was explained by the physics discovered in the nineteenth century, but the growth of information that continues to take place in well-defined

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