“Examined in color through the adjustable window of a computer screen, the Mandelbrot set seems more fractal than fractals, so rich is its complication across scales. A cataloguing of the different images within it or a numerical description of the set's outline would require an infinity of information. But here is a paradox: to send a full description of the set over a transmission line requires just a few dozen characters of code. A terse computer program contains enough information to reproduce the entire set. Those who were first to understand the way the set commingles complexity and simplicity were caught unprepared—even Mandelbrot.” InformationFractals1987Mandelbrot Book:Chaos: Making a New Science Source: Chaos: Making a New Science
“At its most fundamental, information is a binary choice. In other words, a single bit of information is one yes-or-no choice.” ChoicesBitsInformationFundamentalsBinaryYes Or No Author:James Gleick
“When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive.” AttentionConsciousnessInformationExpensive Author:James Gleick
“Every new medium transforms the nature of human thought. In the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of itself.” HumansLongStoriesRunningInformationBecomingMediumsLong RunsHuman Thought Book:The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood Source: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
“Writing comes into being to retain information across time and across space. Before writing, communication is evanescent and local; sounds carry a few yards and fade to oblivion. The evanescence of the spoken word went without saying. So fleeting was speech that the rare phenomenon of the echo, a sound heard once and then again, seemed a sort of magic.” WritingSoundSpaceMagicHeardInformationCommunicationSpeechLocalsPhenomenonFadesEchoesYardsFleetingOblivionSpoken WordEvanescence Author:James Gleick
“The library will endure; it is the universe... We walk the corridors, searching the shelves and rearranging them, looking for lines of meaning amid leagues of cacophony and incoherence, reading the history of the past and of the future, collecting our thoughts and collecting the thoughts of others, and every so often glimpsing mirrors, in which we may recognize creatures of the information.” MayPastUniverseReadingLinesWalksInformationCreaturesMirrorsEndureLibraryLeagueOur ThoughtsShelvesCollectingCorridorsCacophonyIncoherenceRearranging Author:James Gleick
