Edinburgh International Book Festival: James Gleick

Review by Keir Hind | 20 Aug 2012

The first piece of information the audience learned at this event was that James Gleick’s surname is pronounced ‘Glick’. This was an event all about information, focusing on Gleick’s book The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood, about 'the information age'. Interviewer Claire Armitstead led Gleick through the book more or less as written, beginning with a paper being published by Claude Shannon in 1948, 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication', which has been dated as the start of ‘the information age’. But Gleick then went back in the book, and so the event did too, to a much earlier technology, the talking drums used by African tribespeople. These solved the problem of long distance communication by using the technology available in their day. Armitstead and Gleick then went on to talk about how the general principle of technology solving problems has increased the flow of information over the ages. His focus on the personal stories behind the technostuff made his whole story relatable. So there was the story of Ada Byron, the poet’s daughter and Charles Babbage’s assistant, whom Gleick identified as the first computer programmer, but who was discriminated against because she was female. There was one professional society that women could join, but it wasn’t for mathematicians or scientists – it was the horticultural society. Her work with Babbage was neglected, and only with Alan Turing’s codebreaking work in World War 2 did computational machines start to be built. Turing, who was himself discriminated against, for homosexuality, met Claude Shannon during wartime, but as neither was able to talk about their secret work, it wasn’t a momentous occasion. Gleick related all of these stories very modestly, as if he was apologetic that the audience might have heard them before. He was similarly polite with audience questions, where people’s speculations on whether technology might bring revolutionary change were honestly answered – he just couldn’t tell. It was an odd note to end on, because on the whole, Gleick had been, appropriately, very informative. [Keir Hind]

 

James Gleick appeared at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Tue 14 Aug