quote [ “My first thinking about [information theory],” Shannon said, “was how you best improve information transmission over a noisy channel. This was a specific problem, where you’re thinking about a telegraph system or a telephone system. But when you get to thinking about that, you begin to generalize in your head about all these broader applications.” Asked whether at any point he had a “Eureka!”-style flash of insight, Shannon deflected the simplistic question with, “I would have, but I didn’t know how to spell the word.” ]