IS1. How we reached information overload
Дата публикации: Jul 25, 2015 9:40:47 AM
Reporter1: If you're feeling information overload, ... .be the author of the new book - James Gleick - has a book about information and how we got to this point. It's called, er, "The information. A History, A Theory, A Flood". And I think we are certainly all feeling the flood part when James Gleick joins us now
James Gleick: Information Theory is, er, the mathematical framework that allows scientists for the first time to understand information as a thing that a scientist can deal with. Just the way energy is a specific concrete thing that the world is made of. And until science got to the point of being able to treat energy as something make it measure and mathematecize they couldn't build engines. Well, information is ... We know that information is practically everything in our world. We are creating it now and sending it out over the airwaves. We store it in books. We store it in CDs. The computers run solid-state disks that is processing information with very high speed. But all this stuff is over species and it's measured in a unit of measure and we know what it is. It's the bit. And information theory was the theory that created the term "bit" as a fundamental unit of measure for this staff of which our world is made.
R1: But is the bit matter, if cannot get this information because it's not the information that's not correlating with meaning. Why do we care about it?
JG: Well, that...
R1: And more info doesn't really help you. More blogging, more twitting, more facebook updates
R2: So, it's a point of measuring and ...
R1: What are we .. if it's not connected with some value. All you feel is overwhelmed at the end.
JG: That's true but an any end, I think, we begin to find our way. I'm ... optimistic. It's true that... and ... it's a sort of paradox... it was a paradox I have to wrestle with in writing this book that for the engineers to treat information as a scientific thing they had to treat it apart from meaning. They had to say: This screen of bits we're dealing with ... It may be true. It may be false. I don't care where sending it through the wires. All we care about there is meaning. And that's why this great enterprise has poped up in our world. Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo, even Twiter. Even Twitter with it's ... how many million messages a day?
R1: Never mind, I can say a lot, three hundred millions
R2: Oh, yes
JG: And you know that they mostly rubbish, and you know that
R1: Except from mine, sorry
JG: Execept from yours and except from mine. Okay, honesly even a few of mine are rubbish. And yet we used Twitter to help us find their way
Vocabulary
mathematical /ˌmæθəˈmætɪkl/
wrestle /ˈresl/
[intransitive, transitive] to fight somebody by holding them and trying to throw or force them to the ground, sometimes as a sport
As a boy he had boxed and wrestled.
wrestle with somebody Armed guards wrestled with the intruder.
She tried to wrestle with her attacker.
wrestle somebody (+ adv./prep.) Shoppers wrestled the raider to the ground.
[intransitive, transitive] to struggle to deal with something that is difficult
synonym battle, grapple
wrestle (with) something She had spent the whole weekend wrestling with the problem.
He wrestled with the controls as the plane plunged.
We wrestled for hours with the problem of which job to do first.
wrestle to do something She has been wrestling to raise the money all year.
Grammar
And until science got to the point of being able to treat energy as something make it measure and mathematecize they couldn't build engines.
But all this stuff is over species and it's measured in a unit of measure and we know what it is.
The flood of information humanity is now exposed to presents new challenges Gleick says
Questions
Comprehension Check
1. Who is James Gleick? What kind of book did he publish?
2. What is information theory according to him?
3. Where can we find information in our modern life?
4. Why did the scientits have to treat information without meaning? How do we treat it?
5. Why is blogging useful?
Discussion Questions
1. What is news? What makes something news?
2. What do you understand by the phrase, “No news is good news”?
3. Would you like to work as a newscaster or a news reporter? Why? Why not?
4. What is your favorite news program?
5. What do you think of news stations being under state control?
6. What’s the most tragic news you’ve seen on TV?
7. Is news and propaganda the same thing in some countries?
8. Do you think news reporting in your country is fair and balanced? How about in other countries?
Addition Information
James Gleick (/ɡliːk/;[1] born August 1, 1954) is an American author, historian of science, and sometime Internet pioneer whose work has chronicled the cultural impact of modern technology. Recognized for illuminating complex subjects through the techniques of narrative nonfiction, he has been called “one of the great science writers of all time.”
Gleick's books include the international bestsellers Chaos: Making a New Science and The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood.[4] Three of them have been Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award[ finalists; and The Information was awarded the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award in 2012 and the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books 2012. They have been translated into more than thirty languages.
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood is a book by science history writer James Gleick, author of Chaos: Making a New Science. It covers the genesis of our current information age. The Information has also been published in ebook formats by Fourth Estate and Random House, and as an audiobook by Random House Audio. The Information was on the New York Times best-seller list for 3 weeks following its debut from 27 March 2011.
Synopsis
Gleick begins with the tale of colonial European explorers and their fascination with African talking drums and their observed use to send complex and widely understood messages back and forth between villages far apart, and over even longer distances by relay. Gleick transitions from the information implications of such drum signaling to the impact of the arrival of long distance telegraph and then telephone communication to the commercial and social prospects of the industrial age west. Research to improve these technologies ultimately led to our understanding the essentially digital nature of information, quantized down to the unit of the bit (or qubit).
Starting with the development of symbolic written language (and the eventual perceived need for a dictionary), Gleick examines the history of intellectual insights central to information theory, detailing the key figures responsible such as Claude Shannon, Charles Babbage, Ada Byron, Samuel Morse, Alan Turing, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins and John Archibald Wheeler. The author also delves into how digital information is now being understood in relation to physics and genetics. Following the circulation of Claude Shannon's A Mathematical Theory of Communication and Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics many disciplines attempted to jump on the information theory bandwagon to varying success. Information theory concepts of data compression and error correction became especially important to the computer and electronics industries.
Gleick finally discusses Wikipedia as an emerging internet based Library of Babel, investigating the implications of its expansive user generated content, including the ongoing struggle between inclusionists, deletionists, and vandals. Gleick uses the Jimmy Wales created article for the Cape Town butchery restaurant Mzoli's as a case study of this struggle. The flood of information humanity is now exposed to presents new challenges Gleick says, as we retain more of our information now than at any previous point in human history, it takes much more effort to delete or remove unwanted information than to accumulate it. This is the ultimate entropy cost of generating additional information and the answer to slay Maxwell's Demon.
Vocabulary
back and forth /fɔːθ/ - туда сюда, вперед-назад
forth
1) вперёд, дальше (в пространственном отношении)
2) впредь, далее (во временном отношении)
3) вовне, наружу
- and so on
- and so forth
- so far forth
by relay - эстафетой
1) а) смена (особенно лошадей); б) почтовая станция (место смены лошадей)
2) смена (рабочих)
3) спорт. а) эстафета; б) этап эстафеты
4) эл. а) реле; переключатель; б) релейная связь
quantized - оцифрованная
quantify /ˈkwɒntɪfaɪ/ something - to describe or express something as an amount or a number
qubit - квантовый бит
eventual /ɪˈventʃuəl/ - happening at the end of a period of time or of a process
1) возможный, могущий случиться; эвентуальный, возможный при соответствующих условиях
2) конечный, окончательный
perceived /pəˈsiːv/ - воспринимаемый
1) to notice or become aware of something
Synonyms feel, scent, see, sense, smell, taste
Antonym miss
perceive something I perceived a change in his behaviour.
perceive that… She perceived that all was not well.
perceive somebody/something to be/have something The patient was perceived to have difficulty in breathing.
2) to understand or think of somebody/something in a particular way
Synonym see
perceive somebody/something/yourself (as something) This discovery was perceived as a major breakthrough.
She did not perceive herself as disabled.
A science degree and artistic interests are often perceived as incompatible.
perceive somebody/something to be/have something They were widely perceived to have been unlucky.
and the eventual perceived need for a dictionary - и как следствие явная необходимость в (появлении) словаре/я
Samuel Morse /ˌmɔːs/
delve /delv/ [intransitive] + adv./prep. to search for something inside a bag, container, etc. synonym dig
She delved in her handbag for a pen.
1) делать изыскания, изучать, тщательно исследовать; рыться, копаться (в книгах, документах)
2) уст. копать, рыть
3) разг. работать как раб; надрываться; выполнять тяжёлую работу
delve into something - to try hard to find out more information about something
She had started to delve into her father's distant past.
We must delve back into history to find the reason.
bandwagon /ˈbændwæɡən/ - an activity that more and more people are becoming involved in
1) разукрашенный фургон или автомобильная платформа для музыкантов (на парадах, в передвижном цирке)
2) амер. победившая сторона; наиболее популярная партия
3) мода, повальное увлечение; массовое движение
The World Cup bandwagon is starting to roll.
climb/jump on the bandwagon - (informal, disapproving) to join others in doing something that is becoming fashionable because you hope to become popular or successful yourself
politicians eager to jump on the environmental bandwagon
to varying success - с переменным успехом
Wikipedia as an emerging internet based Library of Babel - развивающийся, начинающий существование
vandal /ˈvændl/
exposed /ɪkˈspəʊzd/- незащищённый, уязвимый, беззащитный
(of a place) not protected from the weather by trees, buildings or high ground
The cottage is in a very exposed position on the top of a hill.
(of a person) not protected from attack or criticism
She was left feeling exposed and vulnerable.
(finance) likely to experience financial losses
The flood of information humanity is now exposed to presents new challenges Gleick says
retain /rɪˈteɪn/
1) а) держать; удерживать, аккумулировать, вмещать б) сохранять; удерживать
2) помнить, держать в памяти
retain something to keep something; to continue to have something
synonym preserve
to retain your independence
He struggled to retain control of the situation.
The house retains much of its original charm.
She retained her tennis title for the third year.
retain something to continue to hold or contain something
a soil that retains moisture (влагу)
This information is no longer retained within the computer's main memory.
(figurative) She has a good memory and finds it easy to retain facts.
retain somebody/something (law) if a member of the public retains somebody such as a lawyer, he or she pays money regularly or in advance so the lawyer, etc. will do work for him or her
a retaining fee
to retain the services of a lawyer
entropy /ˈentrəpi/