“Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies” by César Hidalgo
The novel interpretation of economic growth
--
The Chip 4 plan has become a trending topic globally. Why countries such as South Korea and the US can produce 3-nanometer chips while others can’t? Why it is extremely difficult to copy the technology to other countries?
The book “Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies” by César Hidalgo had great points on these questions. César also made excellent insights into some questions that bothered me for a while including:
- What are the differences between apples and Apple (iPhones), soybeans and drones, or raw sugar and computers? What are crystals of imagination?
- When Brazil exported $27.2 billion of soybeans to China and China exported $3.21 billion of semiconductors to Brazil in 2021, what was the trade balance between these two countries in classic economic concepts? What was the trade balance of human imagination between Brazil and China?
- Can you drive a Tesla electric car without knowing how to build it? Why do humans desire products? What are the intermediaries of the practical uses of information, knowledge, and knowhow?
- Most iPhones are made in Chinese factories. Why Apple didn’t move its production to Ethiopia or Nigeria which have lower salaries?
If you also are curious about the above questions, “Why Information Grows” is the right book for you. César re-interpreted economy, product, trade balance, and economic growth in a novel and inspiring way.
Products — crystals of imagination
What are the differences between apples and Apple (iPhones), soybeans and drones, or raw sugar and computers? What are crystals of imagination?
“Thinking about products as crystals of imagination tells us that products do not just embody information but also imagination. This is information that we have generated through mental computations and then disembodied by creating an object that mimics the one we had in our head. Edible apples existed…
