Information Theory

According to "The Information", people didn't have the same concept of information before the use of computers. People used the word information for different purposes much like the word force was used differently before Newton. "We can see now that information is what our world runs on: the blood and the fuel, the vital principal." Information has been defined as what is communicated between two entities. This line of thinking has permeated over the sciences, and it is hard to imagine their existence without information theory. For example, in Biology we think of DNA storing information and passing this information along to other parts of the body and to future generations. African drummers of the nineteenth century and earlier were able to communicate much faster than than anything the West had before the telegraph. An interesting aspect of information is that it can be compacted and have still have the same meaning. However, when there is redundancy, the communication is much clearer. African drummers compacted language to beats by taking out words and then added redundancy to the drum beat so that other people could understand what they were saying. Information theory has revolutionized our society so much so that we don't know what it is like without Information Theory's impact.