History of Information Theory

SES 00-0080689 -罗纳德R.克莱恩（康奈尔大学）-“信息理论的历史“作为计算机，微电子，通信和控制的创新集群之一，在20世纪40年代末向公众宣布，信息理论构成了信息技术发明的基础的一部分，社会评论家现在预示着所谓的信息革命的主要原因。虽然学者们通过调查社会建设和通信系统、计算机和计算机科学的使用来挑战这种说法的技术决定论，但信息论的学术书籍长度的历史并不存在。该奖项支持PI，因为他调查了诺伯特·维纳（Norbert Wiener），克劳德·香农（Claude Shannon），丹尼斯·加博尔（Dennis Gabor），唐纳德·麦凯（Donald MacKay）等人在美国和英国创造信息理论的知识，社会和文化历史，以及20世纪50年代将该理论应用于生物学和社会科学的广泛兴趣，它在20世纪60年代和70年代在通信工程和信息处理中的应用，以及它与20世纪70年代至今经济学和社会学中关于信息经济和信息社会的论述的联系。特别感兴趣的边界工作，科学和技术之间的关系，以及科学和工程知识的用户作为科学和技术变革的代理人的作用的相互关联的主题。他正在探索关于科学和工程学科之间竞争的边界工作概念，如通信工程，数学，物理学，经济学和社会学（而不是科学和非科学之间的划分）。在这样做的过程中，他正在研究边界工作作为科学和工程争议的封闭机制，研究同时代人如何看待科学和技术之间的关系（而不是问他们的关系是什么），并将最近在科学和技术研究中对用户的研究从日常消费者扩展到科学家和工程师的领域。PI的更大目标是写一本关于美国的信息理论（作为科学家、工程师和数学家之间一系列谈判的结果）以及这些行动与后来关于信息社会的论述之间的联系。然而，他的近期目标是（在这个奖项的支持下）完成这个项目的档案和期刊研究，并为拟议中的书采访信息理论的关键人物。

SES 00-0080689 - Ronald R. Kline (Cornell University) - "History of Information Theory"As one of the cluster of innovations in computing, microelectronics, communications, and control announced to the general public in the late 1940s, information theory forms part of the foundation for inventions in information technology which social commentators now herald as the primary cause of a so-called Information Revolution. Although scholars have challenged the technological determinism of such claims by investigating the social construction and use of communication systems, computers, and computer science, a scholarly book-length history of information theory does not exist. This award supports a PI as he investigates the intellectual, social, and cultural history of the creation of information theory in the United States and Britain by Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon, Dennis Gabor, Donald MacKay, and others, the widespread interest in applying the theory to biology and the social sciences in the 1950s, its application to communications engineering and information processing in the 1960s and 1970s, and its links to discourses in economics and sociology about an information economy and an information society from the 1970s to the present.The PI is particularly interested in the interrelated themes of boundary-work, the relationship between science and technology, and the role of users of scientific and engineering knowledge as agents of scientific and technological change. He is exploring the concept of boundary-work in regard to competition among scientific and engineering disciplines, such as communications engineering, mathematics, physics, economics, and sociology (instead of the division between science and non-science). In doing so, he is investigating boundary-work as a closure mechanism in scientific and engineering disputes, studying how contemporaries perceived the relationship between science and technology (instead of asking what the relationship was), and extending recent work on users in science and technology studies from everyday consumers to the realm of scientists and engineers.The PI's larger goal is to write a scholarly book about the development of the information theory in the United States (as the result of a series of negotiations among scientists, engineers, and mathematicians) and the connections between these actions and the later discourses on an Information Society. His immediate goal, however, is (with the support of this award) to finish the archival and journal research on this project and conduct interviews with key figures in information theory for the proposed book.