• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Wiener, Philip P., ed. Leibniz Selections. New York: Scribner’s, 1951.

Wilkins, John. Mercury: Or the Secret and Swift Messenger. Shewing, How a Man May With Privacy and Speed Communicate His Thoughts to a Friend At Any Distance. 3rd ed. London: John Nicholson, 1708.

Williams, Michael. A History of Computing Technology. Washington, D.C.: IEEE Computer Society, 1997.

Wilson, Geoffrey. The Old Telegraphs. London: Phillimore, 1976.

Winchester, Simon. The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Wisdom, J. O. “The Hypothesis of Cybernetics.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2, no. 5 (1951): 1–24.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigation. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. New York: Macmillan, 1953.

———. Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1967.

Woodward, Kathleen. The Myths of Information: Technology and Postindustrial Culture. Madison, Wisc.: Coda Press, 1980.

Woolley, Benjamin. The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason, and Byron’s Daughter. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999.

Wynter, Andrew. “The Electric Telegraph.” Quarterly Review 95 (1854): 118–64.

———. Subtle Brains and Lissom Fingers: Being Some of the Chisel-Marks of Our Industrial and Scientific Progress. London: Robert Hardwicke, 1863.

Yeo, Richard. “Reading Encyclopedias: Science and the Organization of Knowledge in British Dictionaries of Arts and Sciences, 1730–1850.” Isis 82:1 (1991): 24–49.

———. Encyclopædic Visions: Scientific Dictionaries and Enlightenment Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Yockey, Hubert P. Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Young, Peter. Person to Person: The International Impact of the Telephone. Cambridge: Granta, 1991.

Yourgrau, Palle. A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein. New York: Basic Books, 2005.

Yovits, Marshall C., George T. Jacobi, and Gordon D. Goldstein, eds. Self-Organizing Systems. Washington D.C.: Spartan, 1962.

Index

It is much easier to talk about information than it is to say what it is you are talking about. A surprising number of books, and this includes textbooks, have the word information in their title without bothering to include it in the index.

—Fred I. Dretske (1979)

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

Aaboe, Asger, 2.1, 2.2

abacus, 4.1, 8.1

A B C Universal Commercial Electric Telegraphic Code, The (Clauson-Thue), 5.1, 5.2

abstraction

logic and, 2.1, 2.2

in mathematical computation

origins of thinking and

words representing, 2.1, 3.1

Adams, Brooks

Adams, Frederick

Adams, Henry

Aeschylus

African languages; see also talking drums

Aharonov, Dorit

Airy, George Biddell

“Algebra for Theoretical Genetics, An” (Shannon), 6.1, 6.2, 6.3

algebra of logic, prl.1, 8.1; see also symbolic logic

algorithmic information theory, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 12.4, 12.5

algorithm(s)

to calculate complexity, 12.1, 12.2

to control accuracy and speed of communication, 7.1, 7.2

data compression

to describe biological processes, 10.1, 10.2

to generate uninteresting number, 12.1, 12.2

historical evolution of, 2.1, 2.2, 4.1, 7.1

Lovelace’s operations for Analytical Engine as

for measurement of computability

for measurement of information, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 12.4

number tables based on, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3

for proof of number’s randomness, 12.1, 12.2

to reconstruct phylogeny

scientific method as, 12.1, 12.2

Shor’s factoring, 13.1, 13.2

Turing machine, 7.1, 7.2

Alice in Wonderland (Carroll)

Allen, William

alphabet(s)

as code

evolution of, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1

evolution of telegraph coding systems and, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4

information transmission capacity of, 6.1, 7.1

letter frequency in, 1.1, 7.1

Morse code representation of

order of letters in, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3

organization of information based on, 3.1, 3.2

AltaVista, epl.1, epl.2