Von Neumann, Turing and other visionaries gave us computers that could process information.

But Shannon gave us the modern concept of information.

The debate was not whether he was ahead of contemporaries—

the debate was if it was 20, 30, or 50 years ahead.

One of those rare moments in history where somebody founded a field, stated all the major results, and proved most of them all pretty much at once.

Just about anything that has to do with communication, storage and compression follows in some way directly from the contribution that Shannon made.