Book Review of César Hidalgo's The Triumph of Information The evolution of order: from atoms to molecules

Abstract

Saving the traditional victimhood that prevails in the discourse of many countries that fail to achieve optimal economic development, but without neglecting the validity of their arguments, César A. Hidalgo (Artificial and Natural Intelligence Toulouse Institute - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées) proposes in his book The Triumph of Information. The evolution of order: from atoms to molecules (2017) a new approach to economic growth based on the ability to build reality through cooperation and imagination - crystals of solidified imagination - and not on the individual possibility of buying, consume, sell or produce. Starting from this point of view, Hidalgo suggests economic complexity as the main engine for the development of modern economies and, therefore, of twentieth-century societies. The key is not found so much in the traditional production factors, but in the information that a specific society —people, groups, companies and institutions— is capable of processing and sharing through networks to generate knowledge and productive know-how.