What Joseph Smith managed to accomplish by pulling the wool over the eyes of his followers, Claude Shannon has helped to undo the damage by giving birth as in life to information as we know it today. Who was the greater prophet of the two, as in visionary for the future? One led the way into the 21st century. The other has stalled the march of time. :/ Meh.

"A hundred years after his birth, Claude Shannon’s fingerprints are on every electronic device we own.

Twelve years ago, Robert McEliece, a mathematician and engineer at Caltech, won the Claude E. Shannon Award, the highest honor in the field of information theory. During his acceptance lecture, at an international symposium in Chicago, he discussed the prize’s namesake, who died in 2001. Someday, McEliece imagined, many millennia in the future, the hundred-and-sixty-sixth edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica—a fictional compendium first conceived by Isaac Asimov—would contain the following biographical note:

Claude Shannon: Born on the planet Earth (Sol III) in the year 1916 A.D. Generally regarded as the father of the information age, he formulated the notion of channel capacity in 1948 A.D. Within several decades, mathematicians and engineers had devised practical ways to communicate reliably at data rates within one per cent of the Shannon limit."

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/claude-shannon-the-father-of-the-information-age-turns-1100100

is he now a mormon ?

TMI...

Where would we be without mathematicians?

Rudolf E. Kalman, enabled trajectory to be estimated with enough precision to send man to the moon.

Hedy Lamarr, invented frequency-hopping spread-spectrum technology (now used for reading RfM from your phone).

Philo T. Farnsworth (born and raised LDS), invented television, providing a new way for people to waste huge chunks of their lives doing nothing. I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/01/2016 03:11PM by bradley.