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--will disappear. 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. Our cities are pockets where information grows, but 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 off 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 bear 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, but more interesting things.
The diverse set of perspectives that César Hidalgo brings to the eternal question of growth—from economic development theories to big data mining engines to elegantly crafted visualizations—underlies the central thesis of Why Information Grows: diversity. Including many diverse perspectives will ultimately create maximum complexity and chaos, which ultimately creates growth. Hidalgo makes a powerful case for the importance of creativity and imagination in our society's ability to make information—and economies—grow.
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This beautifully written and carefully researched book may set in motion a paradigm shift in economic thinking. Blending deep theory with detailed data, Hidalgo demonstrates that countries grow, firms prosper, and individuals thrive when they enmesh themselves in diverse, talented networks that produce complex physical order, i.e. information. Why do economies grow? Because information does.
This is a wonderful book. The way it introduces information and entropy is refreshing and clear. I don't think I ever read such an intuitive explanation of entropy, (at least a one that goes beyond entropy as disorder).
Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies Details
- Hardcover: 256 pages ( Download PDF:
) - Author: Cesar Hidalgo
- Publisher: Basic Books (June 2, 2015)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0465048994
- ISBN-13: 978-0465048991
- Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6 x 1.1 inches
About the Author
Cesar Hidalgo leads the Macro Connections group at the MIT Media Lab and is an Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT. Hidalgo is a trained physicist experienced in the study of Complexity in Social and Economic systems, and also, a pioneer in the development of tools to visualize Big Data.
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