Re:Has Physics Gotten Something Really Important Really Wrong?
by bpchaps on Saturday July 09, 2016 @08:35PM
(#12064019)
I understand what you mean, but calling it an accident of history is a pretty strong minimization of what amounts to applied philosophy towards genuine innovation.
When I talk about information theory, I'm talking more about the more generalized forms of it (Shannon, etc), not necessarily something that could generally be described as 'information' in a more classical definition. Specifically, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematical_Theory_of_Commu....
(this is a subject I'm actively learning over time, so please correct me if I'm wrong!)
Re:Has Physics Gotten Something Really Important Really Wrong?
by Retric on Saturday July 09, 2016 @10:44PM
(#12064338)
If you consider morse code was 100 years old at that point, there had already been a lot of very practical work under that heading. With earlier effort focused on designing and cracking encryption systems.
Shannon was more an outgrowth of having already abstracted information and looking for ways to encode that for transmission. I don't want to downplay the value, but in historical context it's very different from how you learn about such things after the fact.
PS: The two most widely used and useful parts of math where completely unknown to the anchent Greeks. Aribic numerals are the first example of useful information theory after writing.