Warren Weaver (1894–1978)

I've read this book a long time ago, primarily to understand better complex adaptive systems in light of social interaction information processing. The models contained herein may be applied sufficiently in theories on how information is reaching "liminal crititical thresholds" in a cognitive setting, depending on how the message is distributed. It is useful also in media studies, cognitive science, neural networks, general semantics, NLP and day-to-day "raw" communication, to see how the show more signal loaded with a message interacts with a given audience and what is the probability that a given piece of information will influence a given group or individual, or the message will be "voided" either by cognitive resilience, critical inspection, detachment, flood of other messages, conflicting info (cognitive dissonance), information deflation (as in information treated as a tool of "small-talk" interaction with no rhetorical influence whatsoever, as in modern day social networking sites). Excellent read. show less

L'inizio della teoria dell'informazione

Sono pochi i testi che possono definirsi seminali. Sicuramente quello di Shannon sulla teoria dell'informazione (o "della comunicazione", come la chiama lui) è uno di questi: la teoria nasce praticamente completa, e lascia solo (si fa per dire...) da cercare di metterla in pratica. La parte sui segnali continui rimane più datata, forse anche perché ormai usiamo quasi sempre canali digitali; in compenso quella sui segnali discreti si può direttamente show more usare ancora oggi. In questo libro viene lasciata come introduzione il testo che Weaver scrisse per mostrare al grande pubblico l'importanza della teoria. Un'utile complemento, insomma. show less

I've read this book a long time ago, primarily to understand better complex adaptive systems in light of social interaction information processing. The models contained herein may be applied sufficiently in theories on how information is reaching "liminal crititical thresholds" in a cognitive setting, depending on how the message is distributed. It is useful also in media studies, cognitive science, neural networks, general semantics, NLP and day-to-day "raw" communication, to see how the show more signal loaded with a message interacts with a given audience and what is the probability that a given piece of information will influence a given group or individual, or the message will be "voided" either by cognitive resilience, critical inspection, detachment, flood of other messages, conflicting info (cognitive dissonance), information deflation (as in information treated as a tool of "small-talk" interaction with no rhetorical influence whatsoever, as in modern day social networking sites). Excellent read. show less

As another reviewer pointed out, this is arguably the most influential scientific work of the 20th century. As the human experience becomes more (obviously) about information with the measurability that digital information affords, I think there's a decent chance that history will come to view Shannon in a similar light as the Einstein's and other great physical scientists.

The experience of reading this book is incredible - it's one truly deep, fundamental insight after another, all show more expressed in perfectly efficient mathematical formalism. It's just so elegant. show less