In a memorable scene from the movie The Graduate , Dustin Hoffman s parents throw him a party to celebrate his graduation from college. The parents friends are all there congratulating him and offering advice. One particularly solicitous guest is eager to set him straight. In participating in this symposium, I feel like that guest.
Information is the primary stuff of the coming age.
With the rise of the computer, we have come to appreciate the importance of information for technology, communications, and commerce. But already we are getting glimmers that information is something far more fundamental. Although the information revolution is now in full swing on the technological front, it has lagged behind in the sciences. In part this is because information theory as originally developed in the 1940s was a purely mathematical theory that focused exclusively on the transmission of alphanumeric characters across communication channels. This limited conception of information is now being extended and generalized in ways that someday will allow us to fundamentally rethink the sciences.