The Bit Player

2018
1h 30m

IMDb RATING

7.3/10

393

YOUR RATING

In a blockbuster paper in 1948, Claude Shannon introduced the notion of a "bit" and laid the foundation for the information age. His ideas ripple through nearly every aspect of modern life, influencing such diverse fields as communication, computing, cryptography, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, cosmology, linguistics, and genetics. But when interviewed in the 1980s, Shannon was more interested in showing off the gadgets he'd constructed - juggling robots, a Rubik's Cube solving machine, a wearable computer to win at roulette, a unicycle without pedals, a flame-throwing trumpet - than rehashing the past. Mixing contemporary interviews, archival film, animation and dialogue drawn from interviews conducted with Shannon himself, The Bit Player tells the story of an overlooked genius who revolutionized the world, but never lost his childlike curiosity.

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Biography Documentary

The Bit Player tells the story of an overlooked genius, Claude Shannon (the "Father of Information Theory"), who revolutionized the world, but never lost his childlike curiosity.The Bit Player tells the story of an overlooked genius, Claude Shannon (the "Father of Information Theory"), who revolutionized the world, but never lost his childlike curiosity.The Bit Player tells the story of an overlooked genius, Claude Shannon (the "Father of Information Theory"), who revolutionized the world, but never lost his childlike curiosity.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.3/10

393

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
The Bit Player was commissioned by the IEEE Information Theory Society, a community of over three thousand academic and industrial researchers and engineers working to further understand the role of information and its impact on modern science and technology.

Quotes
Michelle: I heard that one of your later papers proved that you could make a reliable circuit from unreliable components. Do you think this might have applications for the brain?
Claude Shannon: [chuckles] I hope so. I mean, the brain can suffer all kinds of damage and still handle things pretty well, which means there must be redundancy. The fact that the brain has ten billion neurons probably means it was cheaper for biology to just make more components that to figure out sophisticated circuits. Trying to work out all the different connections would be astronomical, impossible, but if we can find patterns, well, there may be ways to simplify things.

Connections
References The Music Man (1962)

User reviews10

Review

Featured review

6/10

An interesting documentary marred by a strange directorial choice

The problem with this documentary is the acted out interviews of Claude Shannon, his wife and the interviewer... who all unfortunately come across as amateur actors even though they aren't. The pausing for every thought is tedious to watch. The construct detracts from the actual information contained in the documentary and seems to take up at least a third of the overall running time. It made me think that I was watching some sort of mockumentary at first.