Aside: I can't agree with the last sentence. The linguistic construct of representing information as bits belongs to the 20th century... but it didn't originate with Shannon, nor in the 20th century. It's not quite explicit in Kasiski's work in the mid-nineteenth century, but it's clearly there as a concept; and it's implicit in the work of the great cryptanalysts of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, particularly when they were breaking nomenclators in languages they did not themselves speak.
Shannon was a great synthesizer; he didn't originate nearly as much as he is credited with originating. And, perhaps, that's the key to understanding the problems with the Engines, too.
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yati
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Date: 2010-06-04 08:10 pm (UTC)Shannon was a great synthesizer; he didn't originate nearly as much as he is credited with originating. And, perhaps, that's the key to understanding the problems with the Engines, too.