
Claude Shannon Documentatry, “Bit Player”, Released Today - BenoitEssiambre
https://twitter.com/ieee_itsoc/status/1284089491775459328
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melling
Shannon’s: A Mathematical Theory of Communication

[http://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon...](http://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon/entropy/entropy.pdf)

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BenoitEssiambre
It's a fascinating read IMO. The book edition starts with introductory notes
by Warren Weaver that really drive the point of how broadly applicable
Shannon's theory is:

"The word communication will be used here in a very broad sense to include all
of the procedures by which one mind may affect another. This, of course,
involves not only written and oral speech, but music, the pictorial arts, the
theatre, the ballet, and in fact all human behavior. In some connections, it
may be desirable to use a still broader definition of communication, namely,
one which would include the procedures by means of which one mechanism (say
automatic equipment to track an airplane and to compute its probable future
positions) affects another mechanism (say a guided missile chasing this
airplane)."

You can also tell this was written around war times.

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segfaultbuserr
Not a surprise. The entire fields of system theory, control theory (previously
known as cybernetics), information theory and computing were originally
developed with heavily influence from wartime problems, especially fire-
control problems. Early fire control computers in WW2 were their earliest
large-scale computers in practical use. Early torpedoes had control loop
stability problems that can make them oscillate up and down between the
programmed depth, which needed insights on control theory to solve.

Same for information theory, cryptography was the driving force, see Bletchley
Park. Also, one closely related result by Shannon was an analysis of
cryptography and ciphers, see _Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems_ by
Claude Shannon [0], written in 1945 and remained classified until 1949. In
this paper, Shannon proved the security properties of One-Time Pad.

Also, the NSA made a digital computer in 1943 in Project SIGSALY. The computer
itself was an engineering accomplishment, but even more, the system was the
first implementation of digital audio in PCM, with its own audio encoding
algorithm for compression.

[0]
[http://netlab.cs.ucla.edu/wiki/files/shannon1949.pdf](http://netlab.cs.ucla.edu/wiki/files/shannon1949.pdf)

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loosetypes
Anyone interested in Shannon might enjoy reading Fortune’s Formula, a book
that ties together Claude Shannon, Bell Labs, and information theory with
horse racing, Vegas, and the stock market.

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cgh
Thanks for this recommendation. I just bought the book. Years ago, I read
Poundstone's "The Recursive Universe" and loved it so his writing combined
with this subject should be great.

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s_dev
I've shared a documentary on George Boole before -- it's my comment history
somewhere. I'll dig it up in a bit. Might be relevant to people.

Trailer: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEjzjLv-
YjI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEjzjLv-YjI)

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pseudolus
The full George Boole documentary has also apparently been posted to youtube
[0]

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hljir_TyTEw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hljir_TyTEw)

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s_dev
Fair enough -- if anyone wants a more hi res version they can trawl through my
comments but thats probably good enough for most people.

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simmons
Great, I've been anxious to watch this! I literally just checked the web site
yesterday to see if it was streaming anywhere yet. (And it looks like the web
site still doesn't mention the Amazon streaming today.)

There are probably business considerations I don't understand since I'm not in
the industry, but I've often been perplexed that indie films seem to spend
years making the rounds in the film festivals, when they could be making money
for the filmmaker from people like me who are eager to stream them.

~~~
syedkarim
I know someone who invested in the production of an indie film—actually, it
was a documentary. I was told that in some cases (especially documentaries)
the goal is for the film to be viewed as far and wide and possible. This
requires lots of money dedicated to marketing, as well as someone who has the
expertise and vested interest to generate a paying audience. The purpose of
the film festivals is to find a distributor who will acquire exclusive
distribution rights. For the producer who wants the film to be viewed by more
than a niche audience on Amazon Prime, it makes more sense to find someone to
market the film. If the film is immediately put on the streaming platforms,
then the distributor loses the value and upside of exclusivity.

Or so I was told.

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creeble
Yes, I know several documentary filmmakers whose films eventually came out on
Netflix after years on the film festival circuit.

They all have high hopes for their films, and Netflix pays a maximum of $50k
for a documentary, one-time, no royalties. So it is always the fallback
consideration, while a distributor who thinks they can make a lot more, with
royalties, is always the hopeful pick.

So it takes years of trying to recoup what is often a few hundred thousand
dollars by playing in festival circuits and sometimes limited on-demand
streaming distributors.

Then, finally, they almost all give up and take Netflix's money (and long-term
exclusivity). If they wait too long, it often isn't even $50k, so it's all a
big gamble.

Of course, everything is changing now that there are no film festivals and
theaters are closing permanently every day.

Edit: spelling

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PeterStuer
And for the Prime subscribers outside the US, as always: "This title isn't
available in your location".

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cjauvin
I am in Canada and it seems to be available.

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samoa42
Not so in Europe

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BenoitEssiambre
Here is the Trailer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7WmMSAxq8s&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7WmMSAxq8s&feature=youtu.be)

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keithwinstein
I saw this movie last August at a showing at the Computer History Museum and
one thing really confused me. The documentary includes a dramatized 1980s
interview between a fictional interviewer ("Michelle", played by Kaliswa
Brewster, who I think represents a combination of the interviewers Anthony
Liversidge and John Horgan who met Shannon at his home in the late 1980s) and
actors portraying Claude and Betty Shannon.

I'm totally on board with this way of re-enacting or dramatizing an interview
when everybody shown is an actor. But later we see an interview with Shannon's
real first wife, Norma (Levor) Barzman, who went on to become a well-known
Hollywood screenwriter (and Communist!), and who amazingly was something like
97 years old at the time of the interview. Eventually (around 27 minutes in to
the movie) we hear the voice of the same fictional interviewer offscreen. The
interviewer shares a revelation with Norma: that Claude Shannon quit his
fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study after only two months to go
work for the war effort, apparently without telling her, and around the time
their marriage went sour. This comes across as a big surprise to Norma (28
minutes in).

The presence of the fictional interviewer interviewing the real Norma (who
also doesn't look 97, but pretty sure that's really her) confused me -- are we
meant to take literally that Norma Barzman never knew that Claude Shannon had
quit IAS and gone to work for the war effort until 75 years later when Kaliswa
Brewster, playing a fictional character, told her in the process of filming a
semi-dramatized documentary about her first husband? Norma was interviewed for
the book (which also includes this information) in 2014 -- did she really not
know? Was this the first take of the interview or is Norma also "acting"
here...? Why use the same "interviewer" in both a fictionalized interview with
other actors and a real one? Was Brewster actually there interviewing her, or
is her voice just dubbed in later so the audience doesn't have to hear the
real documentarian's voice? Or am I just mistaken and the offscreen voice is
somebody else? It really sounds like her!

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thephyber
I spent a few minutes trying to understand what was real footage and what was
re-enacted as well. In the end, it looks mostly re-enacted with artificially
aged footage.

The scene you recall appears to be a real-time revelation, but in the end I'm
not sure it matters much.

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leephillips
It bothered me. I found the possibility that it might have been a real-time
revelation to be somewhat indecent, like a gotcha-interview show.

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MikeCapone
If anyone wants more, I liked the recent biography: "A Mind at Play"

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32919530-a-mind-at-
play](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32919530-a-mind-at-play)

The author is interviewed in the documentary.

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podiki
And a link directly to the documentary on Amazon streaming (Prime):
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B08D291YQS](https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B08D291YQS)

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dmd
Super happy to see this come out. My wife (of the MIT Museum) did a ton of
work on obtaining and preparing the props for it and it was neat seeing her
and some of her coworkers in the credits!

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YesThatTom2
John Tukey coined the term "bit", not his contemporary Claude Shannon. They
really could have picked a better title.

That said... I look forward to watching this!

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justicezyx
Shannon is the Eisenstein of the information technology.

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m463
Eisenstein seems to have been a pretty interesting soviet film director.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Eisenstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Eisenstein)

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afkqs
Any good book recommendations on Shannon or the history of the information
theory?

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JoeDaDude
Fun fact: Claude Shannon tinkered in artificial intelligence and board games
back in the day. He built many devices to play against human players, and one
to play against another machine.

[https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/143233/claude-shannon-
man...](https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/143233/claude-shannon-man-games-
and-machines)

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082349872349872
on that subject, the "mind-reading machine":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23472183](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23472183)

