THE INFORMATION THEORY BOGELS MY MIND

Of our time here on earth, our species spent 95% of it in the preliterate past. We were hunters and gatherers until language was developed into the written word. The invention of the alphabet was the beginning of technology. It moved us from oral history to written history. History and logic are the products of literate thought. The written word is the mechanism by which we know what we know. It organizes thought. The information age began with the alphabet. Letters became words, words became thoughts and the dead were able to speak to the living, the living to the unborn. Over a few thousand years our culture has been developed to its present state by the written word. The alphabet is the greatest invention in the history of man.

All information is recorded as letters, words, and numbers which are encoded into bits. These iddy bitty bits (zeros & ones) are crammed into your computer from the Internet. Amazingly, you have access to all the known information in the world. I have just summarized the current “Information Theory”. It is a branch of applied mathematics involving the quantification of information. It is the key to reliably storing, compressing, and communicating data. One measure of information is known as entropy, which is usually expressed by the average number of bits needed for storage of communication. If you want a more thorough understanding of this topic, I suggest you study thermal physics and quantum computing. It is way beyond my comprehension!