The subject matter here is practically designed for me. I love the survey of communications from Baudot through McLuhan. The Hofstadter and Dennett references heighten the sense that this is almost a sequel to [b:Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid|24113|Gödel, Escher, Bach An Eternal Golden Braid|Douglas R. Hofstadter|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1547125681s/24113.jpg|850076], which was very influential for me. Gleick maintains threads (e.g. to "differences" as photo-bits) that help tie the entire work together without relying merely on Shannon.

Yet, somehow, as it progresses towards the end it seems to let go of those threads, and dive into navel gazing about the nature of culture. It could have woven everything together into the modern framing of information as fundamental to the universe, but instead it wandered into concerns about culture. Those might be interesting, but he hadn't done enough research or laid enough conceptual foundation for it to be authentic here.

I can highly recommend the first 80% or so, though.