My Two Bit's Worth on Information Unit Nomenclature

For half a century the world has been afflicted by a continual confusion of nomenclature between physical data storage capacity, denoted in bits, and information-theoretic information content, denoted in bits.

These quantities are as different as Amps and Watts, and confusing the two is just as pernicious. The electrical community was wise enough early on to give entirely different names to Amps and Watts, in the process honoring early pioneers of the field.

The computing community, alas, has not been as wise.

It is time to rectify this oversight!

• There can be no doubt whatever today that Claude Shannon's contribution in founding information theory was fully sufficient to justify honoring him with a unit name. If anything, his contribution towers above that of Allessandro Volta or James Watt.

• There can be no doubt whatever today that information theory is here to stay, and that the unit of information is and will remain fundamental to fields as disparate as astrophysics and algorithmic complexity theory, and that consequently a distinctively named unit of information content is appropriate and in fact badly needed.

• There can be no doubt whatever today that Claude Shannon is the appropriate figure to honor in selection of a name for the unit of information content; in the history of information theory, his figure stands alone.[1]

Consequently, I (at least) will henceforth adopt the "Shannon" as the formal name for the unit of information content. Since the lazy tongues (and fingers) of the technical community routinely truncate "Ampere" to "Amp" in informal usage, I will feel free to similarly truncate "Shannons" to "Shan".

— Cynbe, Fri Jun 13 18:17:02 CDT 2008

[1] Besides, who wants to use "Kolmogorovs" as a unit name? :)