The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood begins with the tale of colonial European explorers and their fascination with African talking drums and their observed use to send complex and widely understood messages back and forth between villages far apart, and over even longer distances by relay. The book then covers informational implications of technologies from drum signaling to the long distance telephone.

Starting with symbolic written language, The Information examines the history of intellectual insights central to the development of information theory, detailing key figures responsible such as Claude Shannon, Charles Babbage (1791-1871), Ada Byron, Samuel Morse, Alan Turing, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins and John Archibald Wheeler.