6 ms·
Introduced by Claude Shannon, the father of modern information theory, as we know. Ahhh Shannon. The guy who invented the entire field of digital freaking elec
by benten10 11y ago
Introduced by Claude Shannon, the father of modern information theory, as we know.
Ahhh Shannon. The guy who invented the entire field of digital freaking electronics for his master's thesis [1], and then moved on to even greater things. This was it seems five years after his Master's thesis. He was 25 when he proposed this.
The bane of every grad student. "Shannon invented digital electronics for master's thesis. Come up with anything interesting yet?" Add to this, he also appears to have been located at Medford. The shame. What have y'all been upto lately, Boston/Cambridge area grad students? : (
I wonder if our obsession with profits and quick returns and 'hacker culture' is distracting people like him from making similarly great contributions?
[1] http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Shannon_MS_Thesis.pdf http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Shannon_MS_Thesis.pdf
- auvi 11y agoAs Peter Thiel said, "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters."
- jamesrcole 11y agoI always find it a bit surprising that Shannon is remembered far more for Communication Theory than his Master's thesis (which I think was very significant). It seems to me that everything about universities and funding these days is very conservative, making it quite difficult to do the kind of research that can lead to great contributions.