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If you don't know who Claude Shannon is long before starting to write a biography about him, you are not competent to be his biographer. Unsurprisingly the art
by patrec 6y ago
If you don't know who Claude Shannon is long before starting to write a biography about him, you are not competent to be his biographer.
Unsurprisingly the article reads like run of the mill click-bait cant like Sun Tsu's 31 best pieces of leadership advice.
- Dangeranger 6y agoYes, this article has less to do with Claude Shannon and more to do with garden variety motto's like "Chaos is okay", and "Big picture first, details later". This is a theme I've found in shallow marketing copy that's optimized to raise to the top of a social feed instead of actually inform the reader of something substantial. It's quite sad, as Claude Shannon is a truly fascinating individual, but I will not read three-hundred pages of a book by this post's authors to hear more about him.
- chrisseaton 6y ago> If you don't know who Claude Shannon is long before starting to write a biography about him, you are not competent to be his biographer. It's not necessarily the job of the biographer to know the subject - they talk to people who know the subject.
- patrec 6y agoWell, I guess our inclinations differ. I wouldn't want to read a biography of Hitchcock written by a blind man, or a biography of Shakespeare by someone who can't speak a word of English, has read none of Shakespeare's works and knows nothing about Elizabethean society -- no matter what experts they speak to. I'm wondering though: have you read a biography you really loved by someone who completely lacked any personal insight into the work of his subject?