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.

a delightful journey

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

Very very good

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

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 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.

Slow at start but packed with insights

The beginning is slow due to the need to define various concepts & terms. But, as this read/listen picks up, it contains insights & information that are presented in a much more dense, faster & thus more interesting pace. Towards the end (and, especially in the epilogue), it reaches its crescendo & brings the concepts together, elaborating on the promising narrative of the Audible summary.

CESAR HIDALGO is a man *to watch*

This short book is difficult to characterize. Its scope is broad but it goes deep. The parts on information are extremely important and compelling. On economics, I'm not much of an authority but sounds promising. Essential for students of cognitive neuroscience and mindsciences in general. A background in computation is helpful but not essential.

Deep yet concise. innovative.

Hidalgo presents innovative ideas with just the right level of in depth justification. The story keeps moving to the end.

Possibly my favorite book

It’s like economic and ecosystem poetry! It tickled the part of my mind that is almost always self stimulated only. I’m so glad that people are discussing higher order without the common corruption Trojan horse that is most books on information. I loved it and will relisten and relisten!! Well done! Great job! Much appreciation for the time and effort you have spent focusing on this!!!!

Great book!

This may be the most eloquently written science book I’ve ever read and one that manages to make extremely complicated information easier to comprehend. It is certainly comparable to Feynman’s Lectures, in terms of reducing the complex to simpler subsets for the novice, which Hidalgo manages to do without use of complex mathematics.

During the past year I have listened to/read dozens of science books concerning genetics, microbiology, evolutionary biology, evolutionary theory, cognitive & evolutionary neuroscience and one of the things I noticed was that all this evolution violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and that certain aspects of evolution can't be explained by Darwinian theory, leading some to speculate about "design," however, I stumbled upon this book on information theory and it resolves most of the problems aforementioned without resorting to design.

Also, without ever referencing McLuhan, this book elucidates many of McLuhan’s aphorisms: like The Media (transmission of content) is The Message (content has no intrinsic meaning,) and McLuhan’s assertion that technologies are evolutionary extensions (wheel extends foot, phone extends voice…) are also supported by information theory as presented here.

What surprised me most was the lack of any reference to Information Theory in any of the books I have read concerning the physical sciences. How can Evolutionary Theory have missed such a big data set necessary to extend its own theories? It’s a glaring omission from the works I’ve read thus far.

Great book!

Could be better written

You get the sense that the man who wrote this book had the attitude that you should never state something simply if you can polish some $20 word. I have a huge vocabulary and still had to rewind on a few occasions to figure out what the author was trying to say. Some might think this makes the book "smart" but I've generally found if you can't make a point succinctly, you haven't entirely crystallized for yourself what you're trying to say.