Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

商家名称	信用等级	购买信息	订购本书
		Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies
		Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

What is economic growth? And why, historically, has it occurred in only a few places? Previous efforts to answer these questions have focused on institutions, geography, finances, and psychology. But according to MIT's antidisciplinarian César Hidalgo, understanding the nature of economic growth demands transcending the social sciences and including the natural sciences of information, networks, and complexity. To understand the growth of economies, Hidalgo argues, we first need to understand the growth of order.

At first glance, the universe seems hostile to order. Thermodynamics dictates that over time, order—or information—disappears. Whispers vanish in the wind just like the beauty of swirling cigarette smoke collapses into disorderly clouds. But thermodynamics also has loopholes that promote the growth of information in pockets. Although cities are all pockets where information grows, they are not all the same. For every Silicon Valley, Tokyo, and Paris, there are dozens of places with economies that accomplish little more than pulling rocks out of the ground. So, why does the US economy outstrip Brazil's, and Brazil's that of Chad? Why did the technology corridor along Boston's Route 128 languish while Silicon Valley blossomed? In each case, the key is how people, firms, and the networks they form make use of information.

Seen from Hidalgo's vantage, economies become distributed computers, made of networks of people, and the problem of economic development becomes the problem of making these computers more powerful. By uncovering the mechanisms that enable the growth of information in nature and society, Why Information Grows lays bare the origins of physical order and economic growth. Situated at the nexus of information theory, physics, sociology, and economics, this book propounds a new theory of how economies can do not just more things, but more interesting things.

媒体推荐

Finalist for the 2015 Hayek Book and Lecture Prize

“The concept of information is necessary to make sense of anything that is not a boring featureless mass, including life, mind, society, and value. Why Information Grows lucidly explains the foundations of this essential concept, while creatively applying it in exciting new ways. It is filled with interesting ideas, and a pleasure to read.”
—Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of The Language Instinct and How the Mind Works

“Mr Hidalgo succeeds brilliantly in bringing his complex subject to life. His book is full of nuggets, from memorable phrases to interesting metaphors.”
—Economist

“Written in an accessible and entertaining style.... Hidalgo has made a bold attempt to synthesise a large body of cutting-edge work into a readable, slender volume. This is the future of growth theory and his thought-provoking book deserves to be widely read.”
—Financial Times

“Contains some innovative thinking about what drives growth that could help us to navigate the turbulence of the ever more interconnected global economy.”
—Nature

“Thought-provoking...Well written and accessible, the book is full of interesting ideas that deserve to be read and discussed.”
—CHOICE

网友对Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies的评论

This book has clarified and extended my understanding of information and computing well beyond its previous boundaries, and for that I am very grateful! It was worth every moment understanding the ideas. My only reservation is what seemed to me unnecessary repetition of those ideas. I thought the book could have been more tightly edited - but don't let that comment stop you from expanding your mind with the author's erudition!

WHY INFORMATION GROWS is not what I expected -- which was more insight on "the new science of networks". Instead it was about defining information itself -- what generates it and what it generates. The book further challenged me to rethink how the collective intelligence of things, people, and systems might actually work. So this is NOT a page-turner, because it keeps making you stop to think.

For me, the bottom line is that Cesar A. Hidalgo is a deep thinker with a unique intelligence -- further turbo-charged (I assume) by his work with Albert-Laszlo Barabasi at Notre Dame. Like Barabasi, he is capable of finding fresh ways to look across multiple heterogenous domains in order to show us the big picture in a bigger way. Thus anything Hidalgo generates demands serious consideration. And that includes WHY INFORMATION GROWS. I only surfed the book the first time but expect to return for a deeper dive soon.

One of the most useful books on this topic. Well written, to the point, clear, relevant and I would dare to say visionary in terms of how to establish logical bridges between how information conglomerates and how this processes are at the centre of thhe architecture of knowledge today. I am convinced that Dr Hidalgo's seminal work is changing our approach to how we conceive, study and handle complexity in the world. Read my words...Nobel territory!!!!

喜欢Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies请与您的朋友分享,由于版权原因，读书人网不提供图书下载服务

查看更多 下一篇