Post 1

In the book Gleick talks about how there is a connection between information and context. A example he used was the fall of troy and how it was communicated using fires. The relation between the context and information in this story is about the telling of fall of troy. The way they did this was to light giant fires on top of mountains to signal the next fire in the chain till it reached it’s destination. Therefore the information the fires provided was about the fall.

However if a person who had no idea what the fires meant would only see a giant fire on top of a mountain. If i lived back then and saw it i would simply look and say “well thats strange.” While a person who is next to me could suddenly fall to his or her knees and scream “No!” The difference would be that to me the fire had no significance. While the person that was next to me knew the context of the fires and the information that they provide if they were to be lit.
A way that this usage of codes can be seen thru the ages is by the usage of flags and sounds during battles or wars. A particular beat meant something to one side while to the other was just distracting or the arrangement of flag colors in the beginning could mean what battalion was going first. In modern day a well known version of using these types of method of communication is morse code or binary as we discussed in class. Morse code has been used in wars for a long time and can be encrypted to help others lose the context of what each beep meant. This way without a key for the code other people listening in on transmissions would first have to attempt to decipher it which by the time they do could render the information gained from it useless.