From the bestselling author of the acclaimed Chaos and Genius comes a thoughtful and provocative exploration of the big ideas of the modern era: Information, communication, and information theory. Acclaimed science writer James Gleick presents an eye-opening vision of how our relationship to information has transformed the very nature of human consciousness. A fascinating intellectual journey through the history of communication and information, from the language of Africa’s talking drums to the invention of written alphabets; from the electronic transmission of code to the origins of information theory, into the new information age and the current deluge of news, tweets, images, and blogs. Along the way, Gleick profiles key innovators, including Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Samuel Morse, and Claude Shannon, and reveals how our understanding of information is transforming not only how we look at the world, but how we live. A New York Times Notable Book A Los Angeles Times and Cleveland Plain Dealer Best Book of the Year Winner of the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

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This volume is a collection of forty articles dedicated to one of the most distinguished contemporary iranists, Nicholas Sims-Williams, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday on 11th April 2009. It includes an essay on Sims-Williams' outstanding contributions to Iranian studies, especially Sogdian and Bactrian, a list of his publications, editions of various texts written in Sogdian, Khotanese, Parthian, Middle Persian, and Avestan and articles on Old Persian, Middle Persian, New Persian, Bactrian, Balochi, Tati, Judeo-Persian, Caucasian, Uighur philology, linguistics and iconography. The book is illustrated by numerous plates. From the table of contents (40 contributions) A.D.H. Bivar, The Rukhkh, Giant Eagle of the Southern Seas F. de Blois, A Sasanian Silver Bowl A. Cantera, On the History of the Middle Persian Nominal Inflection C.G. Cereti, The Pahlavi Signatures on the Quilon Copper Plates (Tabula Quilonensis) J. Cheung, Two Notes on Bactrian I. Colditz, The Parthian "Sermon on happiness" J. Elfenbein, Eastern Hill Balochi H. Falk, The Name of Vema Takhtu P. Gignoux, Les relations interlinguistiques de quelques termes de la pharmacopee antique.