( CNN ) -- Has our generation become the victim of too much information ? That 's something to ponder as you update your Facebook status , answer your smartphone , glance at the TV and flip through the morning paper , with the radio blaring in the background . Bestselling author James Gleick has studied information -- from the invention of scripts and alphabets , to talking drums in Africa -- for his new book `` The Information '' . `` Chaos , '' also written by the former reporter and editor for The New York Times , helped turn the `` Butterfly Effect '' into a household phrase . Gleick was also short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for his biographies of Richard Feynman and Isaac Newton . CNN recently talked to the author about his latest book and the following is an edited transcript . CNN : For a nonscientist , how would you answer the question , `` What is information ? '' And how has that definition changed over history ? James Gleick : Luckily , we have the Oxford English Dictionary to help us . Unluckily , their definition is now pushing 10,000 words ( as I discuss here ) . The important change -- really , the impetus for my book -- is that there is a scientific definition . It is a mathematical quantity , measured in bits and divorced from any notion of meaning . That was new as of the middle of the last century , and we can think of it as the official beginning of the information age . But we still need a human definition , too ; now more than ever . For us , information includes words and sounds and pictures ; paint on cave walls and ink on paper and smoke signals in the air . What is information ? Information is how we know . CNN : Your book explains the concept of information using examples from around the world , from ancient history to present day . Did you develop any favorite cultures or figures as you wrote the book ? Gleick : I 'm probably not supposed to have a favorite person , but I do . I kind of fell in love with Ada Byron -- the daughter of the poet and a closet mathematician . She is a tragic figure , because she died an early and painful death and because she was a person living in the wrong time : a truly brilliant mathematician whose talents could not have been recognized until a century later . CNN : You say that technology does not define the information age , that it 's the idea of information itself that 's new . Can you explain the difference ? Gleick : It 's tempting to think the Information Age is about the very visible devices that are all around us , on our desks and in our pockets , profoundly changing the pacing and the flavor of our lives , but technology is just technology . What matters is communication -- one-to-many and one-to-one . We are aware of information as a big , general thing , but that was n't always the case . CNN : You talk about an `` information flood . '' Do we understand information better today than in our past , or is there just more of it to learn and consume ? Gleick : Both . When I started writing the book , seven years ago , the initials T.M.I . stood for `` transmarginal inhibition '' or `` Texas Military Institute '' or `` Three Mile Island . '' I do n't need to tell you what TMI means now ; every teenager knows . Yet it 's a paradox : how can there be too much information when information is what we want , what we value , what we live for ? We feel deluged -- unable to process it all , unable to find knowledge . CNN : You 've gone from writing about `` Chaos '' to `` The Information , '' these books feel related , like you 've completed a circle . Agree , disagree ? Gleick : Agree . ( With perhaps a question mark on the word `` completed . '' ) It was from chaos theorists , 20 years ago , that I first heard the words `` information theory . '' The connections between chaos and information are many and deep . One bridge is the notion of complexity itself . How do you measure complexity ? It turns out that the complexity of a system is defined ( and this is not a metaphor ; it is mathematically exact ) by the amount of information it contains . CNN : Any thoughts on what you want to tackle next ? Gleick : A book ! Only next time maybe a small one .
Michael Gleick wrote a new book ` ` The Chaos '' about definition of information . Says scientific definition of information is a mathematical quantity , measured in bits . ` ` Chaos '' ' also says that for humans , information is how we communicate something . Gleick says the actual communication is more important than devices used to communicate .