How We Disappear: A Personal History of Information

A brilliant foray into the nature of information, of history, and of making meaning in the face of death and decay.

Our lives are collections of information--from mundane official documents, poignant family photos, and random artifacts to the cues embodied in our genes. Never is this more evident than in the wake of a parent's death. Yet from all these elusive, even evanescent, data points, history is written and a future is made.

This information is stored on clay tablets and wood pulp; in vinyl grooves, compact discs, and magnetic patterns; and relayed over undersea cables and satellite cell networks. But all information decays. Everything that we put "in formation" eventually collapses into randomness.

In this wide-ranging examination of the micro and macro, world-renowned scholar Thomas S. Mullaney reflects on the deaths of his parents, and on how human lives "disappear." Lyrical and poignant, his erudite, inspiring meditation offers eye-opening insight on the miracle of existence, and on what it means to forge meaning from a chaotic universe.