1/ Information is rare and hides in pockets as it battles the universe’s perennial march to disorder: the growth of entropy.
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6/ History from the lifeless (physical) to the living (biological) to the social and then to the economic is centered not so much on the arrow of time but on the arrow of complexity: the growth of information.
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7/ The mechanisms supporting this growth of information lie around three main pillars: out-of-equilibrium system, accumulation of information in solids and ability of matter to compute.
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8/ In a close physical system, the second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy always tends to increase, meaning that systems march from order to disorder, from an information-rich state to an information-poor state.
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9/ In an out-of-equilibrium system, the steady states that matter reaches tend to be spontaneously organized or information-rich.
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10/ Our planet is an out-of-equilibrium pocket inside a larger system—the universe—that is moving toward equilibrium. The free energy of the sun drives our planet out of equilibrium and provides the energy required for information and biology to emerge.
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11/ For information to stick around it must be accumulated in solids. From a physical perspective, a solid is “frozen” because its structure is stable to the thermal fluctuations of the environment. Information has no way to endure and grow in a scalding world like the sun.
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12/ In “What Is Life”, Schrödinger understood that the information required to build a biological organism was hidden inside the cell. From a physical perspective, both proteins and DNA are technically crystals.
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13/ In his thesis, Prigogine explains the prebiotic nature of computational ability of matter by showing that a simple chemical system (a kind of chemical transistor) through bifurcation models a primitive metabolism. Outputs are conditional of the inputs.
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14/ A tree, in its semi-“frozen” state, is a computer powered by sunlight. While a tree is not conscious, it shares with us a general ability to process information. A tree has knowhow, similarly to the processes our own bodies do without knowing how: digestion, immunity…
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15/ Life is a consequence of the ability of matter to compute. Information helps bridge the gap between the physical and the biological.
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16/ We are born from it and while we interact in social context the reverse is also true: it is born from us. We are small neurons in a vast social and economic universe.
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17/ Crystals of imagination represent ordered arrangements of atoms (ie solid objects) that humans create to accumulate information generated through mental computation. They do not just embody information but also imagination.
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18/ The main difference between apples and Apples is that the apples we eat existed first in the world and then in our heads while the Apples we use to check our email existed first in someone’s head and then in the world.
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19/ Economic development is based not on the ability of a pocket of the economy to consume but on the ability of people to turn their dreams into reality. Economic development is not the ability to buy but the ability to make.
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20/ Our ability to crystallize imagination, to build products give us access to the practical uses of the knowledge and knowhow residing in the nervous systems of other people.
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21/ An electric guitar allows us to “sing” with our hands by embodying knowledge of how the music’s sound waves can be captured using a transducer, and how these sounds can be amplified for many of us to enjoy.
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22/ In a metaphorical sense, the world is populated by ghosts. Faraday’, Tesla and many others live in electrical products.
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23/ It also allows us to transform our ideas into shareable reality. Crystallizing our thoughts into tangible and digital objects is what allows us to share our thoughts with others. It augments us.
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24/ Therefore economy can be seen as a system that amplifies the practical uses of knowledge and knowhow through the physical embodiment of information. It is a sociotechnical system by which humans make information grow.
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25/ A “personbyte” is defined as the maximum knowledge and knowhow carrying capacity of a human. At the individual level, there is a limit to the amount of knowledge and knowhow we can accumulate in our brain and nervous system.
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26/ Therefore, it not only requires that we break up knowledge and knowhow into chunks that are smaller than the ones an individual can hold but also a structure to reconstitute it: a network.
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27/ Our collective ability to accumulate knowledge is therefore limited by both the finite capacity of individuals and the problem of connecting individuals in a network.
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28/ A successful band not only requires each musician to have a deep knowledge of his instrument but also requires musicians to know how to play together. Practice time is required when replacing one of the musician.
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29/ Bonding social capital understood as ability to connect people is as important as human capital defined as knowledge and knowhow that is embodied in humans.
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30/ The basics of social network formation is based on three simple ideas: shared social foci, triadic closure, and homophily.
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31/ A shared social foci means simply that links are more likely to form among people who share a social focus (i.e., classmates, workmates…)
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32/ Triadic closure means that links are more likely to form among people who share friends.
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33/ Homophily, on the other hand, attempts to explain the links that stick—it is the idea that links are more likely to form among people who have similar interests and characteristics.
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34/ An outcome of these tie formation mechanisms is that social networks are composed of clusters of similar people, who often have highly overlapping knowledge and information.
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35/ Social networks help drive the formation of professional networks and tend to bring into a firm people who are similar to the ones already there. Deloitte got 49 percent of its experienced hires from referrals.
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