Alphabetical order had to be invented to help people organize the first dictionaries. On the other hand, we may have reached a point where alphabetical order has gone obsolete. Wikipedia is ostensibly in alphabetical order, but, when you think about it, it’s not in any order at all. You use a search engine to get into it. James Gleick Read Quote
As for memes, the word ‘meme’ is a cliche, which is to say it’s already a meme. We all hear it all the time, and maybe we even have started to use it in ordinary speech. The man who invented it was Richard Dawkins, who was, not coincidentally, an evolutionary biologist. And he invented it as an analog for the gene. James Gleick Read Quote
The word ‘code’ turns out to be a really important word for my book, ‘The Information.’ The genetic code is just one example. We talk now about coders, coding. Computer guys are coders. The stuff they write is code. James Gleick Read Quote
Every time a new technology comes along, we feel we’re about to break through to a place where we will not be able to recover. The advent of broadcast radio confused people. It delighted people, of course, but it also changed the world. James Gleick Read Quote
Information is not knowledge, and knowledge is not wisdom. Reading – even browsing – an old book can yield sustenance denied by a database search. Patience is a virtue, gluttony a sin. James Gleick Read Quote
As soon as the printing press started flooding Europe with books, people were complaining that there were too many books and that it was going to change philosophy and the course of human thought in ways that wouldn’t necessarily be good. James Gleick Read Quote
At its most fundamental, information is a binary choice. In other words, a single bit of information is one yes-or-no choice. James Gleick Read Quote
Information is crucial to our biological substance – our genetic code is information. But before 1950, it was not obvious that inheritance had anything to do with code. And it was only after the invention of the telegraph that we understood that our nerves carry messages, just like wires. James Gleick Read Quote
We say that time passes, time goes by, and time flows. Those are metaphors. We also think of time as a medium in which we exist. James Gleick Read Quote
