Week 9 - Shannon - 2ESDAYS

Given the high technicality of the text, we found we had less to discuss than other weeks. We remembered from previous readings that it was Shannon who established that it is possible to create arbitrarily accurate communication through redundancy, thus enabling the constant communication found in the Von Neumann architecture. Because of this, we found interesting how this text gives us a better view of how this is executed and how it helped us understand the meaning of information in the context of computers. The fact that high accuracy is achieve through redundancy reminded one of us of previous linguistic knowledge: the redundancy of language serves a similar accuracy purpose. For example, in gendered language, the redundancy resulting from grammatical agreement with the subject allows for a better ability to fill in missing pieces when parts of a message are lost to noisy conditions. We were also interested in how events with a low probability are synonymous with more information because of the greater number of possible outcomes. This reminded us of the sometimes too plentiful available choices in everyday life.