Claude E. Shannon : Collected Papers

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Summary: Claude Elwood Shannon
Review: It's a great book if you need to know what's driving todays information technology w.r.t. bandwidth and how it can revolutionize the economy.

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Summary: Absolute must have for academic-types.
Review: The IEEE Information Society releases (IEEE Press) releases yet another priceless book which is both historical in nature; yet every bit as current as when Shannon first started published some of his more famous works in the 1940's. This book is unquestionably a "must have" reference book for either communication engineers or mathemeticians who have either a serious, or newly found interest in the topic of "information theory." Shannon's theorems of Channel Capacity and Channel

Coding are studied by EE students worldwide. However, this book is much-much-more. The books 924 pages contain a wide assortment of articles written by this rare genius. Elementary cryptography and analysis of the Entropy of the written language; "communications secrecy" (which is quite honestly outdated by todays standards; but taken into context, the papers were valuable at the time.) Also obscure articles on "game theory" as it applies to the field of "artificial

intelligence" which at the time, he was a pioneer (along with other great minds including Turing, Minsky, etc..) Also, his articles on early computers and automata, and optimizing circuits so as to use less relays, etc.. are also quite interesting... Yes, the man was mortal, and to show that he wasn't all mathemetician, Shannon writes a fascinating article on the physics of JUGGLING.. The book comes with an introductory chapter which contains a somewhat adequate biography, and an interview with OMNI Magazine which was published in 1987.

This is definately a book which should be on the shelf of anyone serious about the subject. Yes, there are much more technical books on the subject. If you have a PhD in EE or mathematics, you might not be impressed... but Shannon's "easy writing style" which differs from some of the "dry" IEEE writings of today makes for an interesting read; if only for remembering history. -S.A. Hoffman, NY-