Unlocking the Innovations of Claude Shannon: How He Revolutionized the Information Age with His Pioneering Mind

Fra48: Mi sono arrivate due copie guaste con il testo parzialmente stampato al contrario

Italy on Sep 15, 2023

Chris: A very well written and engaging book, especially for an engineering type like me who also strays into the arts realm.

Canada on Jul 15, 2022

AM: This is a good biography of Claude Shannon and can make a pleasant read. Still, several chapters are extended a bit too thin in technical (or mathematical) explanation and too long in prose, often with not so clear clarification of what this genius actually created.
I doubt that if I had no previous technical information on the work of Shannon, I would have understood it from this book.

France on Sep 05, 2020

A. Menon: A mind at play is a look into the life of Claude Shannon, the father of information theory. In terms of the history of science, those of more of an engineering focus have sometimes been overlooked and Shannon could be considered to be one of those who has fallen into this category. Modern communications networks are founded upon many many layers of ideas but information and coding theory are definitely foundational material to what our current technology utilizes. The authors take a look at Shannon's life with a focus on his general disposition as well as accomplishments. One gets a sense of the great man's life and personality as we as his technical accomplishments.

The book is split into three parts beginning with his childhood in Michigan and the early years of computing. Shannon did his undergraduate work in Michigan before going to work with Vannevar Bush at MIT. The authors detail the attitudes of the engineering department and how they were practical tinkerers rather than academic engineers. This attitude was one that stayed with Shannon throughout his professional life.
The authors also detail Shannon's first marriage, his overlap with the incredible minds in...

United States on Dec 20, 2017

ron: Provides background on a brilliant tinker and man. We should know more about one of the brilliant thinkers that opened up our present world of communication, data gathering and social media. Bell Labs must have been a wondrous place for cross pollination and learning. Too bad it has shorten its horizons and become more oriented toward short term commercial success. But is a prime example of what made North America a brilliant place where merit was able to shine. Too bad we are no longer as open and risk taking as we once were. Now it seems we are more interesting in protecting our status and what we have rather than finding or developing more.

Canada on Dec 07, 2017

Athan: Loved reading this biography of Claude Shannon.

On top of writing a proper biography that has clearly had the benefit of significant support from its subject’s immediate family, the authors have produced a tremendous profile of Shannon’s character and personality. Furthermore, this book succeeds 100% in making the connection between his scientific achievements and his personal traits, such as his curiosity and modesty, to say nothing of his mischievousness.

On a personal level, I found it interesting that he did not have much time for the “New Math” that his children were taught in school. As an amateur mathematician I find school math to be too much oriented toward “recipes,” but perhaps I must bow to America’s most intuitive tinkerer, father of the highly abstract communication theory and godfather of the connected era we live in. Also quite funny that he dealt in stocks.

This is not a “professional biography” in the style of “Birth of a Theorem,” but the authors make a decent fist of covering that angle well for the layman. The technical bits that are explained are explained very well. For example, the authors walk you both through an...

United Kingdom on Aug 28, 2017

HandyGuy: My original review was quite harsh, to the point of being unfair, so I'm changing it considerably, and going from two stars to four.

That review was largely a reaction to the authors' style and focus. First impression: a breezy biography that glosses over much and pays too much attention to personality and anecdotes. This first impression was cemented in Chapter 4, which devotes only a brief discussion to how Shannon profoundly changed our world by building on the work of mathematician George Boole, thus creating the new discipline of logic circuits.

I think the authors really missed the boat on this. This profound union of math and electrical engineering is given proper treatment in  The Logician and the Engineer: How George Boole and Claude Shannon Created the Information Age  (even if that book is laden with mathematical detail). Oddly, the authors do cite that work in their bibliography, but skim over its substance in this chapter. This was a huge opportunity to demonstrate how a "playful mind" can leap the boundaries of various disciplines to create a new one, an opportunity lost, in my view.

But they partly make up for it much, much later in...

United States on Jul 26, 2017