The Bit Player: Film Screening and Live Panel Q&A

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. Learn more about The Bit Player on Twitter (opens new window) or on its Website (opens new window).

Film screening and panel discussion featuring:

• Dr. Andrea Goldsmith (Princeton University)
• Dr. Mark Levinson (Independent Filmmaker)
• Dr. Ronald Rivest (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
• Dr. David Tse (Stanford University)