James Gleick Quotes

Software is like entropy. It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the second law of thermodynamics; i.e. it always increases.

Entropy and optimism: the twin forces that make the world go around.

We could not, for example, arrive at a principle like that of entropy without introducing some additional principle, such as randomness, to this topography.

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.

The importance of information is directly proportional to its improbability.

Information is the resolution of uncertainty.

Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics.

As soon as we step beyond the established boundaries of pure thermodynamic theory, we enter a trackless region confronting us with obstacles which even the most astute of us are almost at a loss to tackle.

If you understand everything, you must be misinformed.

How did they know?.

I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side.

'Entropy' broadly means tending towards chaos constantly.

You're an entropic chaos factor

Entropy increases. Things fall apart.

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.

Entropy shakes its angry fist at you for being clever enough to organize the world. (p 2)

Entropy is Janus-faced. Its upside surprises are redemptive and favorable to freedom. It is freedom of choice. But the carrier itself requires constant vigilance against entropic noise. Order is not spontaneous, but it is a necessary condition for all the surprises of freedom and opportunity.

It will take time to restore chaos

Why ask a question whose answer would demand ten more questions?

Just as entropy is a measure of disorganization, the information carried by a set of messages is a measure of organization. In fact, it is possible to interpret the information carried by a message as essentially the negative of its entropy, and the negative logarithm of its probability. That is, the more probable the message, the less information it gives. Cliches, for example, are less illuminating than great poems.

My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it 'information,' but the word was overly used, so I decided to call it 'uncertainty.' When I discussed it with John von Neumann, he had a better idea. Von Neumann told me, 'You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.'

The elevator shaft was a kind of heat sink. Hot food was cold by the time it arrived. Cold food got colder. No one knew what would happen to ice cream, but it would probably involve some rewriting of the laws of thermodynamics.

In these times I don't, in a manner of speaking, know what I want; perhaps I don't want what I know and want what I don't know.

Why?' is always the most difficult question to answer. You know where you are when someone asks you 'What's the time?' or 'When was the battle of 1066?' or 'How do these seatbelts work that go tight when you slam the brakes on, Daddy?' The answers are easy and are, respectively, 'Seven-thirty in the evening,' 'Ten-fifteen in the morning,' and 'Don't ask stupid questions.

With knowledge grows doubt.