Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart) / quote 57 of 171
Shannon and the birth of the bit
A binary digit can be in one of two states. And this is the basis of the “bit”—which is a shortening of “binary digit”: 0 or 1. The information contained in a bit is a measure of how likely it is that the digit is one or zero. With all the talk about infinity so far, it should not surprise you that there is an infinite number of infinite strings made up of zeros and ones. We will return to the importance of infinite strings of ones and zeros and what it might say about human consciousness in chapter 7. The incomparable engineer and scientist Claude Shannon of Bell Labs, who is known as the father of information theory, used the bit as a way to solve the problem of reducing noise in telephone communications and transmitting messages electronically. Shannon’s 1948 paper that first featured the bit—and essentially started the digital revolution and invented the field of information theory—bears the surprisingly pedestrian title “A Mathematical Theory of Communication.” Shannon introduces the concept of the bit33 (which ranks right up there with DNA and relativity as one of the most important ideas of the twentieth century) so nonchalantly that if you are not careful you might pass right over