Claude Shannon is a famous figure in engineering and mathematics, and his work from 193s to 194s won him the title of "Father of the Information Age".
When he was 21 years old, Shannon published what was called the most important master's thesis ever. This paper discussed how to use binary switches to carry out logical operations, which laid the foundation for future electronic computers. At the age of 32, Mathematical Theory of Communication was born. In this book, Shannon put forward bit data, proved that information can be quantified, and expounded how to compress and transmit information with digital coding on the premise of ensuring accuracy. This book is known as the "Magna Carta in the Information Age".
But Shannon did more than that.
Shannon has not only made a lot of academic achievements, but also is very interesting and creative in her life. Although there are many talents who can write excellent papers in engineering and mathematics, they are seldom as good at juggling, unicycle, chess and so on as Shannon. Shannon is even a professional stock picker and amateur poet.
He worked on a top-secret transatlantic telephone line connecting Roosevelt and Churchill during World War II, and built the world's first wearable computer. He learned to fly a plane and jazz clarinet. He made a fake wall in his room, which can be rotated by pressing a button. He once made a gadget, the only function of which is that when the switch is turned on, a manipulator will appear to turn off the switch. In addition, his photo has been published in Vogue magazine.
You can imagine him as a mixture of Einstein and "the most interesting man in the world".
We hope to answer the question "What made Shannon?" And "What should we learn from Shannon?" The problem. After several years of in-depth investigation and research, we have summed up the following 12 items. Maybe this is not a comprehensive list, but we hope it can help you get some inspiration in your life and work.
Compared with Shannon's mid-2th century, there are more things in our life now, such as social media and smart phones, which constantly distract our attention, thus reducing efficiency (and Shannon is partly responsible for it).
But no matter what era, how to avoid distraction is an eternal theme in life. Shannon proved to us that to reduce the influence of distraction, it is not enough to concentrate for a short time, but also to shape one's life and work habits for a long time.
first of all, Shannon won't let herself spend too much time emptying her inbox. He will put all the emails that he doesn't want to reply into a trash can named "Letters I've proc rusty on for too long". In fact, when we dug up Shannon's letters from the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., we found that there were many more mails sent to him than he sent. All the time saved was spent by him on research and exploration.
Shannon uses the same strategy in his office. His colleagues often see Shannon's office door closed (which is rare in Bell Labs' "open door" culture). We know that Shannon's colleagues don't think he is difficult to get along with, but they also feel that Shannon attaches great importance to his privacy and quiet thinking time. One of my colleagues said, "You can knock on his door and he will respond to you, but other than that, he will only talk to himself."
On the other hand, if a colleague visits Shannon with bold new ideas or attractive engineering problems, Shannon usually has an efficient conversation with him for several hours. In fact, Shannon, like everyone else, is concerned about how to use time effectively: she should be involved in the collision of ideas instead of gossiping. For those who are more extroverted than Shannon (to be honest, this is almost everyone), you can learn from Shannon how to deliberately and continuously be distracted during working hours.
In mathematics work, Shannon can directly grasp the core of the problem and put other details behind. He once explained: "I think I prefer concretization to symbolization. I will try to feel the problem itself first and then talk about the equation. " It's as if he saw the solution first and then explained why it was correct.
Bob Gallager, a student of Shannon, recalled, "He had a magical insight. He seems to see through things themselves. He will say' something like this should be true', and he is often proved right afterwards. If you don't have extraordinary intuition, you can't open up a whole new field out of thin air. "
But this occasionally brings trouble to Shannon-mathematicians in academic circles sometimes accuse him of not being rigorous in his work. But their criticism is usually wrong. "In fact," said mathematician Solomon Golomb, "Shannon's intuition about the truth almost never fails." Even though the details need to be perfected, the conclusion is almost always correct.
Of course, most people are not geniuses, and they have no divine intuition like Shannon. So what is worth learning from here? We think it is: even if our intuition is not enough to guide us to develop a new topic like information theory, it can often help us decide whether something should be done or not.
We will ignore intuition because we pay attention to details and intermediate links, but at the same time it also means that we miss the moment of creative generate. Don't expect good ideas to be logically derived, which is a complete misunderstanding of the role of creativity in practical work. Writer Rita Mae Brown pointed out: "Intuition is a logical pause from impatience."
We often express our ideas to others in a clear way, such as articles, slides and speeches, and others will do the same, but we should know that the process of getting these ideas is complicated and not as orderly as expressing them. Waiting for a clear breakthrough is like waiting for a train that will never arrive.
many articles have trumpeted the benefits of tutors, and I don't want to repeat them in this article. It is true that the tutor is very important, but many articles about the tutorial system like to describe the tutor as a resource you need to acquire: find a smart and successful person to support your career, and then you will be all right.
the fact is not that simple. Only relying on self-confidence to approach a mentor who can play an important role in your development process can't give full play to all the values of the tutorial system. You need to be humble enough to listen to your mentor's suggestions, even if they sound uncomfortable, provocative or even counterintuitive. Otherwise, what's the point of the existence of a mentor?
The most important mentor for Shannon should be Vannevar Bush, his graduate school adviser at MIT. He later led the US military science research program in World War II and became the first presidential science adviser. Bush saw Shannon's extraordinary talent, but he also did his duty as a mentor-pulling Shannon out of his comfort zone.
For example, after Shannon's master's thesis was a great success, Bush began to urge Shannon to prepare her doctoral thesis on theoretical genetics. Theoretical genetics is a field where Shannon has no accumulation, which is far from the engineering and mathematics fields he has been engaged in for many years. Bush hoped to prove his disciple's ability to overcome challenges, and Shannon admitted that it made him realize his plasticity.
At the moment of receiving the instruction, Shannon may have various thoughts ("Hehe, genetics?" ), but Bush knew what he was doing, and Shannon chose to trust his mentor's judgment and accept the guidance with an open mind.
Accepting instruction with your heart is actually a sign of modesty: you have full trust in your tutor, and you know that he can see what you can't. After all, when you first found him, there must be a reason you were sure of.
Vaneva Bush's influence on Shannon is also reflected in another aspect: he defended the value of generalists more than professionals. As he told MIT professors:
Bush encouraged Shannon not to set limits for herself, and Shannon proved how he deeply understood this truth in his subsequent career.
We know that Bush's suggestion seems a bit out of date now. The pressures in all aspects of work require us to do our best to become experts in the field, cultivate a unique skill and then study hard. Under this concept, that kind of wide-ranging behavior is just like child's play, and such people are doomed to be defeated by those opponents who are good at concentration.
Shannon will be angry if he hears this. Shannon deeply agrees with Bush's concept of generalist, which we think coincides with Shannon's natural curiosity. Shannon succeeded not only because he was born smart, but also because he spared no effort to maintain diversified interests.
His most famous master's thesis combines his interests in Boolean logic and computer. These two disciplines, which were originally ruled out, have been integrated in Shannon's brain. Shannon's information theory paper absorbed his accumulation in code decoding, linguistics and literature. He once explained to Bush:
While Shannon devoted himself to scientific research, he also cultivated some hobbies that could help him keep his mind sharp: jazz, unicycle, juggling, chess, gizmos, poetry, and so on. He could have used all his talents in a specific field, constantly researching and digging, and spent his whole life. But fortunately, he didn't do it.
extensive reading also means the freedom to stop whenever you want. Even a genius like Shannon can't guarantee that all the work started will bear fruit. This may also violate some modern common sense, but we think it makes sense. Shannon usually works until he is satisfied-then he turns to other things. In some people's eyes, this is the performance of three-minute fever, but we think it is because he has clearly known how much he will pay later.
Even Time Ferriss (the prophet of modern productivity movement) preaches the importance of knowing when to stop: "Knowing how to stop in time when there is no result is a necessary condition to be a winner." In the same way, this is why many talented painters keep a large number of unfinished works in their studios.
When Ed Thorp built a wearable computer with Shannon in 1961, he visited Shannon's workplace, which was a large family workshop where Shannon used to fiddle with all kinds of things. He described it as "an inventor's paradise ... with hundreds of mechanical and electronic devices, motors, transistors, switches, pulleys, gears, condensers, etc.
Shannon's academic research is the same. His attic is full of notes, half-finished articles and report papers with "good questions" written on them.
On the one hand, we regret Shannon's unpublished work, on the other hand, we also realize that it is this kind of chaos that provides conditions for his creation. Shannon didn't spend time and energy sorting out papers and studios, but devoted it to studying chess, robots or investment strategies.
Shannon's extensive interests make him need enough time to turn his ideas into reality. Unfortunately, he usually doesn't publish his findings. He always follows his curiosity. Although it sometimes seems inefficient, he may come back to study his best ideas after several years.
His paper on information theory published in 1948 took nearly ten years to complete. When he graduated from graduate school in 1939, he began to have the idea of studying "the basic attributes of information transmission system, including telephone, radio, television, telegraph, etc." During the period from the idea to the publication of the paper, it coincided with the Second World War, and he participated in the research of anti-aircraft gun theory and cryptography, so that he could only study information theory in his spare time.
Later, when reviewing the past, he picked up the previous inspiration and began to study. Research work is not linear, and ideas always come at any time. "I remember waking up in the middle of the night and suddenly having an idea, and then I have been studying this idea all night." A colleague of Shannon said that when his information theory paper was published, it was "like a bomb". This is the result of ten years of research, and Shannon's patience makes his theory very mature.
This is perhaps the most difficult one for us to understand. Living in the era of "timely satisfaction", it has become strange to wait for ten minutes at work, not to mention waiting for ten years. But for people engaged in innovation, entrepreneurship and creative work, perhaps this is the best lesson. All elites regard time as their friends.
Remember: Shannon didn't devote all his energy to studying information theory for ten years. In fact, he was very busy and had no time at all. Studying information theory was only his spare time, but it was his persistence and patience that enabled him to finish this important job.
what will we do in our spare time if we can persist for a long time?
Shannon doesn't have many friends. His colleagues at Bell Labs said that Shannon was not "unfriendly", but he was never a social species.
Brockway McMillan, a colleague of Shannon's, said that Shannon "has always been impatient with arguing about mathematical problems, and his way of solving problems is different from that of most people". Shannon's outstanding IQ makes him indifferent or impatient. As McMillan said, "He has never argued about his ideas. If people don't believe it, he will ignore those people. "
There is only a thin line between arrogance and self-confidence, but Shannon is generally on the right because he has intellectual resources to support his self-confidence. But equally important, he spent a lot of time accumulating these intellectual resources, because he was never involved in the struggle for power and position, playing with office politics, or trying to satisfy every critic. The pleasure of solving problems is more important to him than anything else, so when he chooses friends, he will choose those who are like-minded and those who help him the most. This also makes him have few friends.
Alan Turing is one of his few friends. During World War II, Turing came to the United States on behalf of the British government to investigate cryptography. They had an in-depth exchange. In bell