As somebody who grew up in an era where technology is commonplace, and becomes more convenient as time goes on, it is interesting to hear and see the perspectives of technology from people in the past. The development of technology is obviously something that we have discussed before in class, but we focused more on theories in this class, mainly the theory presented by Claude Shannon known as the Information Theory.

So we began class with a brief recap on Signal to noise ratio. The signal is everything that we want to hear, and the noise is everything else. It’s like when your parents are scolding you for something, and you block it out until they get to the end, which you immediately understand and respond to.

Having been required to finish reading the book describing Shannon’s life, I will say that I thought he was an interesting man. His information theory is something that I hoped we would delve into in class, because the finer points of it were unclear to me. Thankfully, we discussed how the Information Theory worked, along with being provided some examples.

From what I understand, the Information Theory is indifferent to meaning. Information only comes with uncertainty. If you there is a conversation that you have had with somebody beforehand, you aren’t really getting information so much as repetition. Information only comes from the unexpected, from things that you have not heard before. I don’t really understand how this means that supposed fluff, like letters in a language, are unnecessary, but I should probably do more reading on it.

It was certainly an interesting class, but I confess that my day and the coming week has been weighing too heavily on my mind for me to give an in-depth analysis, so I hope this will be enough for now.