Thanks to Claude Shannon, you’re able to read this article on a screen right now. This loving documentary, from video essay channel Delve, neatly depicts the father of information theory and his early work.
How blackjack and coin tosses gave rise to the pixel
A video essay on the father of the Information Age
A video essay on the father of the Information Age
In 1948, Shannon published a paper with a radical idea: all information, everything from an image of a Matisse to the sound of horns on a Sinatra album, can be condensed into a coin toss. All that’s required to relay the information is a series of binary answers: a yes a no, a one or a zero, a black pixel or a white pixel. That idea became the backbone of the Information Age.
Despite his contributions, Shannon somehow isn't a household name like, say, Einstein. That's surprising, considering the berth of fields Shannon contributed to. For only one example: after his landmark paper on information theory, Shannon developed the modern strategy for counting cards in blackjack.
Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
