The Ascent of Information

Praise for The Ascent of Information

“Caleb Scharf provides a wonderfully accessible and compelling account of how our relationship to information is becoming increasingly central to how we live. Full of fascinating insights drawn from an impressive range of disciplines, The Ascent of Information casts the familiar and the foreign in a dramatic new light.” —Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe

“Masterfully weaving together anecdotes and thought experiments from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, theoretical physics, astrobiology, and information theory, Scharf investigates how our relationship with the dataome has fundamentally altered our lives and how it will continue to do so.” —Science

“Scharf… offers a bold new perspective on the relationship between humans and information in this spirited consideration of data as a motivating force in humans’ lives…Scharf’s provocative thesis is sure to shake things up for readers with an interest in humans’ relationship to data.” —Publishers Weekly

“An astute, provocative contribution to information science and futurology.” —Kirkus

“Scharf provides a fascinating history of information theory.” —Booklist

“A fascinating study of information and its types.” —Library Journal, STARRED review

“A transformative new way of looking at our increasingly data-driven existence.” —Lee Billings, Scientific American

“Information is a way for one part of the universe to know something about another. What could be more profound than that? In this engaging and wide-ranging book, Caleb Scharf shows how information brings the world to life, both figuratively and literally.” —Sean Carroll, author of Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

“I really enjoyed The Ascent of Information. The book is packed with provocative ideas, backed by wonderfully marshalled data, and entertaining on every page. Fascinating glimpses of what may turn out to be a new way to look at life.” —Jonathan Weiner, author of The Beak of the Finch

Caleb Scharf is the award-winning author of The Zoomable Universe, The Copernicus Complex, and Gravity’s Engines, and the director of the Columbia Astrobiology Center. He has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Scientific American, Nautilus, and Nature, among other publications. He lives in New York City.

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