Key Takeaways
- The major battle of the universe is between chaos and war between entropy and information
- Information is typically thought of as ethereal, but it is physical. Is the structure of physical items and pervades everything you say, and do.
- It is important to not confuse information with meaning. Information is foundational. Information is simply information. Information is physical order. Whether it has a meeting or not doesn’t matter.
- Information is a fundamental aspect of nature, and increases along with life
- Two important elements of information is knowledge and know how. Knowledge is the understanding of connections between things, and being able to use that to predict outcomes. No, how is more tacit and requires understanding how to act out the information in real life. Know how accumulates at both the individual and collective levels
- Information is hidden on the other side of chaos. Information, rich states are rare, such as when you first drop some ink into a glass of water. Information poor states are generic and common. It is the glass of water once the Ankh has perfectly diffused. If you heat up a pot of water, it goes from generic and information for two information, rich and chaotic.
- Information is the foundation of everything. According to Hidalgo, information is the “physical stuff” that gives rise to the universe we know. It is present in every atom, molecule, and organism, and it is the driving force behind all processes of evolution, growth, and development.
- The growth of information is linked to the growth of complexity. Hidalgo argues that as information accumulates, it creates more complex structures and systems. The more information that is available, the more diverse and sophisticated the structures and systems that can be built.
- Information is not evenly distributed. Hidalgo suggests that the distribution of information across different systems is highly uneven. Some systems, such as the economy or the Internet, are highly information-rich, while others, such as a single cell or a simple chemical reaction, contain relatively little information.
- The growth of information is a self-reinforcing process. Hidalgo proposes that as information accumulates, it creates new opportunities for further growth. More information leads to more complexity, which in turn creates more opportunities for new information to emerge.
- The ability to process and manipulate information is key to human progress. Hidalgo argues that the development of tools for processing and manipulating information, such as writing, printing, and computing, has been crucial to the growth of human civilization. These tools have allowed us to accumulate and manipulate vast amounts of information, leading to new discoveries, innovations, and cultural achievements.
- Life is a consequence of matter being able to compute
- Products embody both imagination and information
- Products are crystallized imagination
- Amassing knowledge and know how is difficult because creating the networks and structures to embody it is difficult
- Trust enables networks and networks enable trust. The cost of forming a link goes down drastically if you trust the people and network
- The more prosperous countries are those that enable information to grow
- Bridging social capital – making connections between people who don’t know each other
- Bonding social capital – accumulated between strong ties, recurring interactions between teams to help produce things
- Income of countries predicted by complexity of their economies
What I got out of it
This book offers a compelling framework for understanding the growth of information in the universe and its impact on the evolution of complex systems.