Review of A MIND AT PLAY
A humble mathematician who changed our world
The “information age” we find ourselves in is both new in our history, yet highly familiar to most of us. But most of it is the result of the impressive work of one man: Claude Shannon, the “father” of the information age.
Although he’s a big deal, if you’re not into mathematics of computer science, you may never have really heard of him. I hadn’t until I read The Art of More in which there is a chapter dedicated to the work of Shannon. So, I picked up. A Mind At Play: How Claude Shannon Invented The Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman, to learn more about this impressive man.
Part engineer, part mathematician, Shannon is a peculiar man. His work has had an immeasurable impact on our abilities to communicate, transmit, and store information – laying the foundation of today’s infrastructure through the invention of information theory – but he had an atypical career and more atypical personality.
Most scientists and engineers of the time were at formal academic institutions, but Shannon spent most of his post-PhD career at Bell Labs – a telephone company – where he was granted impressive freedom to experiment, tinker, and think at his leisure.
What stood out most to me about Shannon, and is reflected in the title of his biography, is his insatiable desire to play. Rather than laboring to write academic articles, which he mostly neglected as he became enamored with some other topic, he invented, played, and explored. His remarkable ability to play with physical toys and machines (he was an avid juggler), and breaking down problems into their simplest forms, is what made Shannon stand out from everyone else.
He was a remarkably humble man for being of such importance. He had little interest in formal academia, and only became a professor at MIT some 30 years into his career. Rather, he is the purest form of intellectual one could imagine, pursing questions and ideas with no goal other than to understand the topic – something lost in today’s academic environments.
Overall, this was a great read. Regrettably, I listened to it on audio, which isn’t inherently an issue, but due to how busy I during that time, it took me about five weeks to get through the whole thing, making for a rather disconnected listening experience.
Published: July 2017
Publisher: Simon and Shuster
Format: Audio
If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (2011) READ MY REVIEW
Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell by Jason Riley (2021) READ MY REVIEW
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson (2021)
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