Why Information Grows

The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

By: César Hidalgo

Narrated by: Stephen Hoye

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 anti-disciplinarian 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.

©2015 César Hidalgo (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

Great book! The breath of the framework

Is astonishingly beautiful. It will be hard for anyone who reads and understand this work to look at the world the same. I have been fascinated with information theory, biology, and physics for years. The author brings them all together in an accessible way. Breathtaking work!

Very very good

Really informative and a good read. Worth picking up and giving it a read. Now!

a delightful journey

Listened twice:) A great book with a wide and though provoking historical perspective that packs a punch !

Insightful

The author is very clever in his analysis. Makes a complex matter such as information itself and is able to break down in easy edible portions making comprehension graspable to the common fodder. Obliged. Muchas Gracias, Cesar Hidalgo. Alejandro Hidalgo V

Very direct explanation of economies

To oversimplify a fair bit , the author explain in more detail and using a lot more physics what Hayek try to outline in his influential 1945 paper the use of knowledge in society. the only way I can sort of describe this book is it is a cross between Thomas Sowell's book "Knowledge and Decisions" and Matt Ridley's book "The Evolution of Everything" with a bunch of complexity theory mixed in.