3 ms·

I read The Idea Factory, about Bell Labs, and they had a few sections on Shannon. Honestly, from what I read, it sounds like the guy didn't want to work, or hav

by s73ver 9y ago

I read The Idea Factory, about Bell Labs, and they had a few sections on Shannon. Honestly, from what I read, it sounds like the guy didn't want to work, or have a job. And the Fates were kind, and dropped him into a situation where not only was he able to make that a reality, but he was able to provide several meaningful contributions to the fields of programming and information theory while doing so. He was able to not have to "work", and get to be part of some pretty amazing stuff.

zild3d 9y ago
>he was able to provide several meaningful contributions Don't you think that's severely downplaying his role? He invented the field of information theory, not just made several contributions. He founded digital circuit design. The entire concept of being able to use electrical circuits to implement boolean logic, and proving you can use those circuits to solve any problem that boolean logic can. He also came up with sampling theory, bringing communications into the digital world (as well as signal processing). And then sure, he made several (extremely important) contributions to the field of cryptography > get to be part of some pretty amazing stuff. He WAS a lot of that pretty amazing stuff.
- s73ver 9y ago
  Maybe I did downplay a bit. But the key takeway was, he was involved with all of that, not because he was assigned to it, but because it was interesting to him, and he wanted to do something with it. His work with digital circuit design arose out of him playing with making maze solving robots. He, of all people, clearly embodied the idea of, "Get a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life." Of course, it doesn't help that he had an extremely tolerant employer, one who realized that letting him do things like play with the robots, would lead to such breakthroughs.

3 ms·

I read The Idea Factory, about Bell Labs, and they had a few sections on Shannon. Honestly, from what I read, it sounds like the guy didn't want to work, or hav

by s73ver 9y ago

zild3d 9y ago
>he was able to provide several meaningful contributions Don't you think that's severely downplaying his role? He invented the field of information theory, not just made several contributions. He founded digital circuit design. The entire concept of being able to use electrical circuits to implement boolean logic, and proving you can use those circuits to solve any problem that boolean logic can. He also came up with sampling theory, bringing communications into the digital world (as well as signal processing). And then sure, he made several (extremely important) contributions to the field of cryptography > get to be part of some pretty amazing stuff. He WAS a lot of that pretty amazing stuff.
- s73ver 9y ago
  Maybe I did downplay a bit. But the key takeway was, he was involved with all of that, not because he was assigned to it, but because it was interesting to him, and he wanted to do something with it. His work with digital circuit design arose out of him playing with making maze solving robots. He, of all people, clearly embodied the idea of, "Get a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life." Of course, it doesn't help that he had an extremely tolerant employer, one who realized that letting him do things like play with the robots, would lead to such breakthroughs.