The Information

This book by James Gleick came up once on Tim Ferriss in the episodes we index. That mention was a genuine on-air recommendation, not just a passing reference. The people who brought it up: B. Jeffrey Madoff. Every occurrence below links to the episode page and to the exact second it was said on YouTube.

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood begins with the tale of colonial European explorers and their fascination with African talking drums and their observed use to send complex and widely understood messages back and forth between villages far apart, and over even longer distances by relay. The book then covers informational implications of technologies from drum signaling to the long distance telephone.