The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood

James Gleick, the author of the bestsellers Chaos and Genius, brings us his crowning work, a revelatory chronicle that shows how information has become the modern era's defining quality—the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world. The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanished as soon as it was born. From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the misunderstood "talking drums" of Africa, Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed human consciousness. He provides portraits of key figures such as Charles Babbage, Ada Byron, Samuel Morse, Alan Turing, and Claude Shannon. The book explores the rise of the information age and its impact on society, communication, and technology.