From Drumbeats to Bits: 3,000 Years to Grasp Information

01I. A History of 'Information' Itself

James Gleick is one of America's best science writers. In 2011, he published The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, tracing the full history of something we use every day but rarely think deeply about—information.

From African talking drums to the invention of writing, to the telegraph, to Claude Shannon's information theory, to today's digital age, the book shows how humanity gradually came to understand the concept of 'information' itself.

The central figure is Claude Shannon—the genius who invented information theory in 1948. Shannon did something revolutionary: he turned 'information' from a vague everyday concept into a precisely measurable physical quantity. He coined the unit 'bit' and proved that any information—text, sound, images—can be encoded as 0s and 1s.

The entire digital economy of today—the internet, smartphones, AI—rests on the foundation Shannon laid in 1948: the insight that information can be quantified, encoded, and transmitted. Understanding the nature of information is understanding the most fundamental thing of our age.

02II. Why Information Is the Core Asset of This Era

The deepest insight this book offers investors is this: it makes you understand why the most profitable companies of the past few decades have almost all been 'information companies'.

Google's essence is organizing and retrieving information; Meta's essence is connecting human information; Amazon's essence is matching supply and demand using information; Nvidia's essence is compute power for processing information; even Visa's essence is transmitting payment information.

These companies can earn staggering profits because information has a unique economic property—its replication cost is near zero, but its value can be magnified infinitely.

A traditional factory: the cost of producing the second unit is roughly the same as the first (raw materials, labor). But for a piece of software, an algorithm, a database, the cost of copying the second copy is almost zero. That's why information companies can have 80%+ gross margins while traditional manufacturing struggles at 10-20%.

Gleick helps you see at a fundamental level—wealth in our era increasingly comes not from 'matter' (atoms) but from 'information' (bits). Grasp this shift and you understand why the largest companies by market cap moved from oil, steel, and automobiles to software and semiconductors.

03III. The Most Prescient Insight: Information Overload & the Scarcity of 'Meaning'

The most forward-looking part of this book is Gleick's discussion of 'information overload.'

Shannon showed that information can be copied and transmitted infinitely. But Gleick points out a profound paradox—when information becomes infinitely abundant and cheap, what becomes truly scarce is 'meaning' and 'attention'.

In an era of information scarcity, accessing information was valuable (whoever had it had an edge). But in an era of information overload, information itself depreciates; what becomes scarce is the ability to filter out meaningful signals from the flood, and 'attention' itself.

This has a dual implication for investors:

First, for markets—information advantage is disappearing. When information is infinitely available, the room for profiting from information asymmetry shrinks fast (echoing the strengthening of the efficient market hypothesis). Today, any public information is priced by the entire market within seconds. Information is no longer a source of alpha; judgment and discipline are.

Second, for investment targets—'attention' has become the new oil. Since information is free and attention scarce, companies that can capture and hold user attention hold the core resource of the new era. This explains why TikTok, YouTube, Meta—these 'attention harvesters'—are so valuable: they aren't selling information; they're selling scarce human attention.

04IV. Where I Part Ways with Gleick

First, written in 2011, it completely missed the impact of AI.

Gleick traces information's history up to the digital age, but he had no foresight of how generative AI would upend the very nature of 'information'. AI doesn't just transmit and process information—it creates information, blurring the line between 'real information' and 'generated information.' In the AI era, 'information overload' has escalated into 'a torrent of information where truth is indistinguishable from falsehood.' Gleick's framework was advanced for 2011, but it lacks the biggest variable—AI—and needs a major update.

Second, it leans heavily on the 'technical history' of information and underplays the 'power history'.

Gleick focuses mainly on the 'technological evolution' of information—talking drums, writing, telegraph, bits. But he doesn't sufficiently explore the line 'who controls information = who holds power'. Information has never been neutral—controlling its dissemination (media, platforms, algorithms) means controlling society's cognition and behavior. The power Google and Meta wield over information flows today is unprecedented in human history. Gleick's 'technical history' lens underestimates the 'power dimension' of information—and that dimension is precisely the key to understanding the true moats of Big Tech.

Third, its optimism about 'information = wealth' may be overstated.

Gleick (and that era) was optimistic about the 'information economy'—that information abundance would bring prosperity. But we now see the dark side—information overload brings cognitive chaos, rampant misinformation, attention manipulated by algorithms, and society torn apart by filter bubbles. The explosion of information isn't all wealth; it's also a new kind of social problem. Gleick wrote in a relatively optimistic time and underestimated the destructive power of information.

Fourth, its practical utility for ordinary people is limited.

This book is a grand intellectual history, brilliantly executed, but it tells you almost nothing about 'what to do as an individual in the information age.' It helps you understand the nature and history of information, but it doesn't give you tools for 'how to protect your attention and filter meaningful signals in an overloaded world.' This isn't a flaw (it's meant to be intellectual history), but readers should know: this is a book for understanding, not for operating.

05V. Gleick vs. Kelly: Two Grand Histories of Information & Technology

Gleick's The Information and Kevin Kelly's Out of Control / The Inevitable are both grand histories of fundamental change in our era, but they focus differently.

Gleick focuses on information—he traces the evolution of the concept of 'information' itself, with Shannon's information theory at its core. Kelly focuses on technology and systems—he traces how technology evolves like life itself, with emergence and self-organization at his core.

Gleick tells you 'what information is and where it came from'; Kelly tells you 'where technological systems are heading.'

Together, they give an investor a complete framework for understanding the digital age: use Gleick to understand 'why information became the core asset and why attention became the new oil' (the economic essence); use Kelly to understand 'how information technology systems will emerge and evolve' (the future trend).

The deepest synthesis: we are shifting from an 'atom economy' (matter, manufacturing) to a 'bit economy' (information, attention, algorithms). Gleick explains the essence of this shift; Kelly predicts its direction. An investor who understands this fundamental shift understands why, for the past 30 years and the next 30, wealth will continue to flow from 'companies that make things' to 'companies that process information.'

06VI. Final Thoughts

My biggest takeaway from this book is a perspective that sees through surfaces—it made me realize that 'information,' which I use every day but never deeply pondered, is actually the most fundamental thing of our age.

We live in an era defined by information, but most people have no concept of 'what information is.' We scroll through our phones, fed by algorithms, floating in an information flood, without ever thinking—what is the underlying logic of all this?

Gleick shows you—starting with Shannon's 1948 insight that 'information can be quantified,' humanity set off a revolution that is still unfinished. This revolution created the internet, smartphones, AI, and also the greatest concentration of wealth in human history (information companies dominating markets), as well as the unique predicaments of our age (information overload, attention harvesting, truth versus falsehood).

For investors, this book offers not specific buy/sell advice, but a fundamental sense of direction—wealth is flowing from atoms to bits, from matter to information, from manufacturing to algorithms. Understand this big direction, and you understand why the Magnificent Seven dominate the market, why 'attention' and 'compute' are the new oil, and why AI (the ultimate processor of information) will be the next biggest variable.

There's a line from Gleick that I keep coming back to: 'Information is the blood that circulates through the body of our world.'

Understand the blood, and you can understand the body.

For someone living in the information age and investing in the information economy, this understanding is the most fundamental bottom-layer cognition—closer to the essence of wealth in our era than any specific investment technique.