John Brockman

World War I was the first mechanized war, the Second World War could be considered the first struggle based around communication technologies. Unlike previous conflicts, there was heavy utilization of radio communication among military forces.

The field of cryptography advanced quickly, in order to keep messages secret and hidden from adversaries. Also, for the first time in combat, radar was used to detect and track aircraft, thereby surpassing conventional visual capabilities that ended on the horizon.

Shannon built on the work of fellow researchers Ralph Hartley and Harry Nyquist to show that coding and symbols were the key to resolving whether two communicators had a common understanding of the uncertainty being resolved.

Shannon then asked, “What is the simplest resolution of uncertainty?” To him it was the flip of the coin—heads or tails, yes or no: an event with only two outcomes. He concluded that any type of information could be encoded as a series of yes or no answers.

When change is easy, the need for it cannot be foreseen; when the need for change is apparent, change has become expensive, difficult, and time-consuming.”

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”