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The Information: James Gleick Chats with Robert Krulwich

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American



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James Gleick is best known for his groundbreaking bestseller Chaos, and has also authored inspired biographies of Newton and Richard Feynman. His new book, The Information, came out earlier this year and has been on my list of books to blog about for a while. Tonight I saw him chat about it at the New York Public Library with Robert Krulwich, the co-host of the WNYC show Radiolab.

Much of his book deals with the idea of information being something that has a physical meaning. We are made out of the information contained in the 750 Megabytes of our DNA, Gleick said. "Information was always what it was even before we knew about it."