Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Clay Shirky • Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers into Collaborators
The steam engine and the breakthrough to an energy-rich economy set off such a process of endogenous growth that it has so far lasted for more than two centuries. Global GDP per capita, which hardly budged for centuries before the age of industrialization, has been rising rapidly and fairly consistently since 1820.
Jeffrey D. Sachs • The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions
Stratechery • Social Networking 2.0
The capacity to mass-produce books was incredibly subversive to medieval institutions, just as microtechnology will prove subversive to the modern nation-state. Printing rapidly undermined the Church’s monopoly on the word of God, even as it created a new market for heresy.
James Dale Davidson, Lord William Rees-Mogg • The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age
This has set up the current culture clash between People of the Book and People of the Screen.
Kevin Kelly • The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
In 1984 the futurist Stewart Brand made the now-iconic declaration ‘Information wants to be free.’ He would later clarify what that meant, saying, On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the
... See moreAaron Bastani • Fully Automated Luxury Communism
“Bitcoins are the most important invention since the internet itself. They will change the way the entire world does business.”