Modern technology owes much to the introduction of the binary digit or “bit”, first proposed by Claude Shannon in “A Mathematical Theory of Communication”, a paper published in 1948. The bit would go on to transform analog to digital, making Shannon the father of the information age. His contemporaries (and collaborators) included Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, and other architects of the digital era.

In this podcast, moderated by a16z board partner Steven Sinofsky, the authors of the new book about Shannon, A Mind at Play — Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman — discuss the life and mind of the mathematician, engineer, and cryptographer from his roots as a precocious tinkerer in Gaylord, Michigan to the halls of MIT and Bell Labs. But this conversation is also, more broadly, about how genius and innovation happens… beginning with play.