The Bit Player

As a software engineer, admittedly my desires for this documentary skewed more to the academic side than what might interest other viewers, but even then, the explanations were so superficial that I don't see how any of us could find this fulfilling.

In regards to the equivalence between circuitry and Boolean logic, there were a few equations that flashed up for half a second.

For the connection to entropy, an even briefer flash of an equation, with even less explanation about what any of the symbols are referring to.

When researchers introduced a proof of concept for the Shannon limit, the narrative was "fancy that, these French and Thai people who I was ignoring happened to have made an incredible discovery. I wouldn't have thought it would be them." Who is this woman giving us her gossipy take on information theory? I didn't come for your cattiness, I wanted to hear *explanations* of Shannon's insights, along with his personal history.

In terms of personal history, he wasn't a rock star or anything, so that wasn't sufficiently interesting to keep things going. What we ended up with was a simplistic tale of "smart guy did this and that thing which you don't really understand. Computers and tech and stuff".

Incessant mentions of how he was the founder for all this, while mentioning Von Neumann just once; and Turing, never! Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace similarly got no mention at all. What a waste of material for a piece of entertainment.

So few people have heard of Claude Shannon, and his impact is bigger than all of the household names. He sought a "universal theory of communication" for the accurate and efficient transmission of information. The documentary succeeds in explaining concepts simply and clearly. The film also links Shannon's interests in Information and communication to his early interests in codes. Commissioned by the IEEE Society, The Bit Player is the perfect title for this informative film portraying the "father of information theory".

Well!!! This is not a documentary but yes its good to have a content created for an overlooked genius. It is a kind of Documentary - Drama version. It has been enacted as per scripts however very well , undoubtedly. Actors has done pretty well job on that. You will not get any hints that it is a drama documentary type. All the interviews are re enacted of old contents. There would be always a question on contents if it is drama version, nevertheless worth watching. His achievements speak for themselves, and he is certainly a person whom anyone who uses a smartphone or computer should know about. The Bit Player is the perfect title for this informative.

Cheers!!!!!

This is a tremendously good telling of Claude Shannon's work, career and impact which I think will be a great help in giving him the wide recognition he deserves. Someone said it's "not quite a documentary" which is not a criticism though and it takes few liberties with the facts, unlike the Imitation Game for example!

The problem with this documentary is the acted out interviews of Claude Shannon, his wife and the interviewer... who all unfortunately come across as amateur actors even though they aren't. The pausing for every thought is tedious to watch. The construct detracts from the actual information contained in the documentary and seems to take up at least a third of the overall running time. It made me think that I was watching some sort of mockumentary at first.