4 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2019

      Here I might posit that Cesar Hidalgo's book Why Information Grows (MIT, 2015) has some interesting theses about links between people and companies which could be extrapolated up to "societies of linked companies". What could we predict about how those will interact based on the underlying pieces? Is it possible that we see other emergent complex behaviors?

  2. Nov 2018
    1. I had begun to think of social movements’ abilities in terms of “capacities”—like the muscles one develops while exercising but could be used for other purposes like carrying groceries or walking long distances—and their repertoire of pro-test, like marches, rallies, and occupations as “signals” of those capacities.

      I find it interesting that she's using words from information theory like "capacities" and "signals" here. It reminds me of the thesis of Caesar Hidalgo's Why Information Grows and his ideas about links. While within the social milieu, links may be easier to break with new modes of communication, what most protesters won't grasp or have the time and patience for is the recreation of new links to create new institutions for rule. As seen in many war torn countries, this is the most difficult part. Similarly campaigning is easy, governing is much harder.

      As an example: The US government's breaking of the links of military and police forces in post-war Iraq made their recovery process far more difficult because all those links within the social hierarchy and political landscape proved harder to reconstruct.

  3. Jul 2018


  4. Mar 2018
    1. You could throw the pack away and deactivate your Facebook account altogether. It will get harder the longer you wait — the more photos you post there, or apps you connect to it.

      Links create value over time, and so destroying links typically destroys the value.