Bootstrapping Complexity
By Kevin Kelly
2011
First Published
4.35
Average Rating
155
Number of Pages
This book tells you how to understand networks such as the internet and social networks. However it was written long before Facebook, or even the web, existed so it explains the principles of networks by examples in biology—like a beehive, a rain forest, or immune system. It tells the story of how feedback loops can create new phenomena and govern old ones, and why letting innovations like a social network be "out of control" is a good thing. The author also visits technological labs and reports on what they discover as they try to create artificial intelligence from dumb chips, or robots from insect-like parts, or complex organizations from simple ones. If you want to understand how the hive-mind of Twitter or Wikipedia works, this is the best book on the subject. It is an abridged version of the original, Out of Control, edited to focus on the chapters that tell how to "bootstrap" large complex systems and to engineer governance in non-governable networks. While written 18 years ago, the examples and wisdom are timeless.
Avg Rating
4.35
Number of Ratings
17
5 STARS
59%
4 STARS
18%
3 STARS
24%
2 STARS
0%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads
Author
Kevin Kelly
Author · 13 books
Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He co-founded Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor from its inception until 1999. He is also editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets half a million unique visitors per month. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control."
