The difficulty of forming a clear conception of the subject is increased by the fact that while we have to deal with novel and strange facts, we have also to use old words in novel and inconsistent senses. A message had seemed to be a physical object. That was always an illusion; now people needed consciously to divorce their conception of the mess

The relationship between the telegraph and the newspaper was symbiotic. Positive feedback loops amplified the effect. Because the telegraph was an information technology, it served as an agent of its own ascendency.

We can see now that information is what our world runs on: the blood and the fuel, the vital principle. It pervades the sciences from top to bottom, transforming every branch of knowledge. Information theory began as a bridge from mathematics to electrical engineering and from there to computing. What English speakers call “computer science” Europe

Babbage invented his own machine, a great, gleaming engine of brass and pewter, comprising thousands of cranks and rotors, cogs and gearwheels, all tooled with the utmost precision. He spent his long life improving it, first in one and then in another incarnation, but all, mainly, in his mind. It never came to fruition anywhere else. It thus occupi

Writing in and of itself had to reshape human consciousness. Among the many abilities gained by the written culture, not the least was the power of looking inward upon itself.

She listed her qualities: Firstly: Owing to some peculiarity in my nervous system, I have perceptions of some things, which no one else has; or at least very few, if any.… Some might say an intuitive perception of hidden things;—that is of things hidden from eyes, ears & the ordinary senses.… Secondly;—my immense reasoning faculties; Thirdly;… 

Entropy was not a kind of energy or an amount of energy; it was, as Clausius had said, the unavailability of energy.

A part of Dawkins’s purpose was to explain altruism: behavior in individuals that goes against their own best interests. Nature is full of examples of animals risking their own lives in behalf of their progeny, their cousins, or just fellow members of their genetic club. Furthermore, they share food; they cooperate in building hives and dams; they

Thus Gödel showed that a consistent formal system must be incomplete; no complete and consistent system can exist.