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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).
It also provides an interesting and new perspectives of what economy is, and how to measure it. More than just being an alternative approach it's quite complementary, and specially convenient for the times we live in which we have a lot of data about all the data we have.
Yes it's also a book about data,… and it doesn't mention "Big Data". Thanks for that César. It's also a book about technology and yet the word barely appears (César instead uses a very poetic name the reader will find beautiful and appropriate).
And yet the book has gaps (for those gaps I first 4★ed the book but then I thought contents were good enough and that I had a very pleasurable reading). And the gaps are not small:
One of the main concepts introduced in this book is that of economic complexity, an index that can be applied to regions, industries or companies. And yet the author doesn't give a definition of it (he gives a hint, enough to show that the index is difficult to define in bare words). Well, he could have used an appendix to provide a definition!
Then the author claims this index predicts future rates of growth (in conventional economic terms). Yes, it shows how that correlation exists between the economic complexity index measured for countries in 1985 and present rates of growth. Bu that's just one correlation, it's far from enough. Ok, he believes on his index,… thus the natural next thing to do is to show current values of economic complexity for countries, and thus give us a prediction of future economic growth (and with that, an option of testing the prediction). Mysteriously enough the author doesn't provide that information either.
(Note the negative synergy of the lack of a formal definition of the index, and the lack of the current data… specially when claimed that the index predicts our future).
Finally, I felt there's also a gap between the first part, in which he introduces information and entropy, and how both are in essence physical (solid) phenomena and not just mathematical, and also how matter computes; and the second part in which he jumps to a bigger scale, that of societies. It's somehow difficult to understand how both parts connect. At the end of the book he gives a very good summary, which certainly helps establishing the connection. Strangely enough, it's actually outside the main body of the text, in the acknowledgments (yes I read them, they actually have interesting ideas and stories), in which César more clearly manifests the link:
"As I […] tried to escape the rhetorics of deprivation, guilt, prosperity, optimization, equilibrium, and wealth, I learned that economic growth was nothing more than an epiphenomenon of a larger, more universal, and more relevant phenomenon. This is not the growth that captures headlines and political agendas, but the growth that makes possible the existence of life and society— even if we ignore it. This is the growth of physical order, or information. Soon I had to accept that information was what it was all about. At this point, I could no longer see the economy in terms of income, regulations, and agents. The economy was a mundane manifestation of something deeper."
Gaps or no gaps, I thoroughly recommend this book.
- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Basic Books (June 2, 2015)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0465048994
- ISBN-13: 978-0465048991
- Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 0.9 x 9.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Average Customer Review: 86 customer reviews
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#362,889 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #351 in Epistemology Philosophy
- #103 in Information Theory
- #447 in Development & Growth Economics (Books)
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