Sublime

I think I know the explanation, and it also explains why 80/20 is becoming even more prevalent, affecting our lives in mysterious and perplexing ways. The answer is in the burgeoning power of networks. The number and influence of networks has been growing for a long time, at first a slow increase over the past few centuries, but since about 1970 th

in part 2, we will propose four basic principles that are sufficient to predict typical exponents observed for cities, based on a few basic features of human behavior and infrastructure networks.

Network density beats total size, a theme we’ve seen throughout the examples of this book. Once a niche player forms their atomic networks and begins to branch out, they enjoy network effects that become very hard to stop, particularly in their initial market.

The fundamental law of human beings is interdependence. A person is a person through other persons.

the cost of connectivity per link is fixed, as is human effort approximately in cities.

The physicist Geoffrey West of the Santa Fe Institute made a remarkable discovery about cities.

This is unlike fluctuations in simpler physical systems, which are typically signs of disorder

So what is the potential that out-of-equilibrium systems such as our bathtub whirlpool minimize?