hive mind Concepts

Hive Mind: How Your Nation’s IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own

by Garett Jones · 15 Feb 2015 · 247pp · 64,986 words

) 736-1784 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jones, Garett, author. Hive mind : how your nation’s IQ matters so much more than your own/Garett Jones. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8047

…

153.9—dc23 2015021620 ISBN 978-0-8047-9705-4 (electronic) Designed by Bruce Lundquist Typeset at Stanford University Press in 11.75/16 Baskerville HIVE MIND How Your Nation’s IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own Garett Jones STANFORD ECONOMICS AND FINANCE An Imprint of Stanford University Press Stanford

…

Economic Inquiry. Those articles documented the paradox of IQ; this book is an attempt to resolve that paradox by spelling out the channels of the hive mind. I’ve been fortunate to have excellent coauthors on my other IQ-related papers: Omar al-Ubaydli, John Nye, Niklas Potrafke, and Jaap Weel have

…

in mind when people tell you that IQ can’t be changed. Collective Intelligence: Each Nation as Hive Mind Animal researchers, computer scientists, and occasionally social scientists sometimes use the metaphor of “collective intelligence” or a “hive mind” to explain group actions. Why do animal herds run together to avoid predators, dodging this way

…

hand. Those millions of small cognitive contributions are what create each nation’s collective intelligence, each nation’s hive mind. Members of society all draw on that collective intelligence, they all get benefits from the hive mind that they never pay for, benefits that, by my lights at least, they don’t deserve. And

…

than to be the highly skilled honeybee in the less-productive hive: your neighbors have an important influence on what you can accomplish. That the hive mind exists for every nation is almost obvious. The key question is whether a nation’s average IQ scores are an important driver of the

…

hive mind. It Pays to Be Around the Cognitively Skilled In the next three chapters we’ll review the basics of modern IQ research: brain scans and

…

mostly because of IQ. And across countries, differences in geography, culture, and the long reach of colonialism are surely shaping the wealth of nations. The hive mind is no single-cause theory of prosperity. It’s just a story that almost no one else is talking about. Chapter 1 JUST A TEST

…

Joneses So high-IQ countries tend to save more—but are those savings rates just a sum of millions of personal decisions? Or is the hive mind at work? My colleague Bryan Caplan has often told me that the most important finding in sociology is that “people have a modest tendency for

…

test scores of all of these nations’ citizens and all of their immigrants. Our future may depend upon it. Chapter 10 POEM AND CONCLUSION The Hive Mind: A Summary Patient savers Skilled team members On the average Prudent Peers Open minded Informed Voters Pretty good co- operators On the average With exceptions

…

–16, 18–20, 22, 23, 28–29, 44, 46–47, 68, 70, 123, 167. See also da Vinci effect Cognitive Reflection Test, 68 collective intelligence/hive mind: defined, 12; poetic summary, 165 Colombia: average cognitive ability score in, 169; average IQ score in, 169 colonialism, 14, 118 common interests, 149–51 common

Program Or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age

by Douglas Rushkoff · 1 Nov 2010 · 103pp · 32,131 words

the first place. Resistance is futile, but so is the abandonment of personal experience scaled to the individual human organism. We are not just a hive mind operating on a plane entirely divorced from individual experience. There is a place for humanity—for you and me—in the new cybernetic order. The

…

. But what, if anything, is refused to the churn? Does committing a piece of work to the digital format mean turning it over to the hive mind to do with as it pleases? What does this mean for the work we have created? Do we have any authority over it, or the

…

from having a crack at it, improving it, taking it apart and putting it back together. If you don’t render your work unto the hive mind, then you are seen to be denying society its right to work with and repurpose your creations. Just as smart phone purchasers want the right

Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made

by Gaia Vince · 19 Oct 2014 · 505pp · 147,916 words

beyond small village life, and those who are able to negotiate the accumulated learning, wisdom and knowledge generated by millions of global citizens via the hive mind of the worldwide web. It starts with school – with reading and writing and the self-confidence and awareness that sprout from those uniquely human skills

You Are Not a Gadget

by Jaron Lanier · 12 Jan 2010 · 224pp · 64,156 words

in social engineering. One might ask, “If I am blogging, twittering, and wikiing a lot, how does that change who I am?” or “If the ‘hive mind’ is my audience, who am I?” We inventors of digital technologies are like stand-up comedians or neurosurgeons, in that our work resonates with deep

…

bits can be alive on their own, independent of human observers. This idea has since appeared in a thousand guises, from artificial intelligence to the hive mind, not to mention many overhyped Silicon Valley start-ups. It seems to me, however, that the Turing test has been poorly interpreted by generations of

…

number of AI enthusiasts, after a protracted period of failed experiments in tasks like understanding natural language, eventually found consolation in the adoration for the hive mind, which yields better results because there are real people behind the curtain. Wikipedia, for instance, works on what I call the Oracle illusion, in which

…

now conscious? Does it have a soul? The Metaphysical Shell Game The alternative to sprinkling magic dust on people is sprinkling it on computers, the hive mind, the cloud, the algorithm, or some other cybernetic object. The right question to ask is, Which choice is crazier? If you try to pretend to

…

achieve antimagic. Humans are free. We can commit suicide for the benefit of a Singularity. We can engineer our genes to better support an imaginary hive mind. We can make culture and journalism into second-rate activities and spend centuries remixing the detritus of the 1960s and other eras from before individual

…

of Quality Results in a Loss of Quality The fragments of human effort that have flooded the internet are perceived by some to form a hive mind, or noosphere. These are some of the terms used to describe what is thought to be a new superintelligence that is emerging on a global

…

collective was guided or inspired by well-meaning individuals. These people focused the collective and in some cases also corrected for some of the common hive mind failure modes. The balancing of influence between people and collectives is the heart of the design of democracies, scientific communities, and many other long-standing

…

benefited from all of these institutions. There certainly have been plenty of bad reporters, self-deluded academic scientists, incompetent bureaucrats, and so on. Can the hive mind help keep them in check? The answer provided by experiments in the preinternet world is yes—but only if some signal processing has been placed

…

of adjustments will eventually evolve into an approximate mirror of democracy as it was before the internet arrived. The reverse problem can also appear. The hive mind can be on the right track, but moving too slowly. Sometimes collectives can yield brilliant results given enough time—but sometimes there isn’t enough

…

between digital ideologies. Whenever we notice an instance when history was swayed by accident, we also notice the latitude we have to shape the future. Hive mind ideology wasn’t running the show during earlier eras of the internet’s development. The ideology became dominant after certain patterns were set, because it

…

always struck by the endless stress they put themselves through. They must manage their online reputations constantly, avoiding the ever-roaming evil eye of the hive mind, which can turn on an individual at any moment. A “Facebook generation” young person who suddenly becomes humiliated online has no way out, for there

…

more concerned with manipulation than truth or beauty. If content is worthless, then people will start to become empty-headed and contentless. The combination of hive mind and advertising has resulted in a new kind of social contract. The basic idea of this contract is that authors, journalists, musicians, and artists are

…

encouraged to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind. Reciprocity takes the form of self-promotion. Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising. It’s true that today the idea can work in

…

pay editors or impresarios? In the new scheme there is nothing but location, location, location. Rule the computing cloud that routes the thoughts of the hive mind, and you’ll be infinitely wealthy! We already see the effect of an emerging winner-take-all social contract in students. The brightest computer science

…

enter into some sort of legal or political fortress—or become a pet of a wealthy patron—in order to be protected from the rapacious hive mind. What free really means is that artists, musicians, writers, and filmmakers will have to cloak themselves within stodgy institutions. We forget what a wonder, what

…

any concept of what is actually being done as a result of investments. The Cloudy Edge Between Self-Delusion and Corruption True believers in the hive mind seem to think that no number of layers of abstraction in a financial system can dull the efficacy of the system. According to the new

…

the way people are treated in web 2.0 designs, they have provided many more examples. A prominent strain of enthusiasm for wikis, long tails, hive minds, and so on incorporates the presumption that one profession after another will be demonetized. Digitally connected mobs will perform more and more services on a

…

licensing. This is one of the more serious disconnects between what I love about making music and the way it is being transformed by the hive-minded movement. I’ve gone back and forth endlessly with ideological new-music entrepreneurs who have asked me to place my music into Creative Commons or

…

is some momentum toward doing just that. In fact, there is even a tendency to want to think of nature as if she were a hive mind, which she is not. For instance, nature could not maximize the meaning of genes without species. There’s a local system for each species within

…

be little evolution, because the process of evolution would not be able to ask coherent, differentiated questions. A Wikified Science Conference The illusions of the hive mind haven’t thus far had as much influence in science as in music, but there’s a natural zone of blending of the Silicon Valley

…

real human to also be a person is a person. This idea is essentially a revival of the Turing test. If you can perceive the hive mind to be recommending music to you, for instance, then the hive is effectively a person. I have to admit that I don’t find any

…

stylistic variety, the next question is “Why?” I have already suggested that the answer may be connected with the problem of fragment liberation and the hive mind. Another explanation, which I also think possible, is that the change since the mid-1980s corresponds with the appearance of digital editing tools, such as

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

by Shoshana Zuboff · 15 Jan 2019 · 918pp · 257,605 words

. Just as industrial society was imagined as a well-functioning machine, instrumentarian society is imagined as a human simulation of machine learning systems: a confluent hive mind in which each element learns and operates in concert with every other element. In the model of machine confluence, the “freedom” of each individual machine

…

capitalism’s vision—of an instrumentarian society enabled by a new form of collective action. Machine learning is rendered here as a collective mind—a hive mind—in which each element learns and operates in concert with every other element, a model of collective action in which all the machines in a

…

to render, measure, and compute social behavior. With that foundation, we turn to Pentland’s Social Physics, which aims to recast society as an instrumentarian hive mind—like Nadella’s machines—but now extensively theorized and deeply evocative of Skinner’s formulations, values, worldview, and vision of the human future. II. When

…

move in stealth, crafting their effects at the level of automatic psychological responses and tipping the self-other balance toward the pseudo-harmonies of the hive mind. In this process, the inwardness that is the necessary source of autonomous action and moral judgment suffers and suffocates. These are the preparatory steps toward

…

agreements, 333; needed to challenge asymmetries of knowledge and power, 344–345, 485–486, 520–525 collective decision making, 407, 432–433 collective mind. See hive mind collectivism: behavior for the greater good, 431–432; and death of individuality, 436–437, 438–440, 444, 469; neoliberal ideology in opposition to, 38, 39

…

, 108, 504–505; and surveillance capitalism’s collectivist social vision as departure from market democracy, 21, 495, 504–512, 519. See also hive mind Columbus, Christopher, 176–177 Columbus, Ohio, 229 co-marketing, 217 commodity fictions (Polanyi), 99, 345–346, 514 Common Rule (legal standards for experimentation), 303–304

…

; and no exit, 470–474; psychological processes in, 461–465; and psychological processes of adolescence, 449, 452–455; and social comparison, 461–465. See also hive mind hive mind: as core social process of instrumentarianism, 397f; instrumentarian society as, 20–21, 419; human hive, 414–415; machine confluence as, 409; machine hive, 413–415

…

; definition of, 431 social media: addictive design of, 448, 449, 451–452; Chinese censorship of, 392–393; and compulsion, 453–454; and destructive dynamics of hive mind, 21; DIALOG platform as precursor to, 270; emotional toll of, 445, 446, 447–448; and homing to the herd, 467–468; Instagram, 276, 457–458

Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World's Tallest Skyscrapers

by Jason M. Barr · 13 May 2024 · 292pp · 107,998 words

-century New York, the FAR helped shape—literally and figuratively—the global quest for skyscrapers in the twenty-first century. CHAPTER 3 The American Century Hive Minds in the Sky Sears (Willis) Tower (1974) THE SEARS TOWER Sears, Roebuck and Co. never set out to build the world’s tallest building, but

…

Machines, General Electric, or Exxon, the iconic corporate skyscrapers that rose were not just symbols of American business might but were also hives that produced hive minds, where a company would oversee and coordinate its vast global operations and plan its corporate strategy. Large metropolises like New York and Chicago, as a

Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism

by Robin Chase · 14 May 2015 · 330pp · 91,805 words

company in Inc. magazine, he made a compelling case for what a good platform for participation does: If all Quirky did was tap a motivated hive mind for latent ideas that fill small and important market gaps, it would be a clever company. But it does something far bigger and more complicated

We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency

by Parmy Olson · 5 Jun 2012 · 478pp · 149,810 words

starting “tripcode vs. anon” threads. The tripfags began mocking the anonymous users as a single person named “Anonymous,” or jokingly referring to them as a hive mind. Over the next few years, however, the joke would wear thin and the idea of Anonymous as a single entity would grow beyond a few

…

be manipulated if a small group of four or five people suggested a raid and repeatedly commented on it to make it look like the hive mind was latching on. Sometimes this worked, sometimes it didn’t. It was a game where seconds counted—if the original poster couldn’t post for

…

two minutes, the chance could be lost and the hive mind would lose interest. Another reason to stick around: /b/ was an endless source of learning, whether it was how to prank pedos or unearth someone

…

like that.” And the overwhelming sense of camaraderie and accomplishment dominated reasonable argument. The world’s media were paying attention to Anonymous and its extraordinary hive mind; the last thing they needed was to start fiddling with the technology they were relying on and slowing things down. Even when Dutch police swiftly

…

Internet itself, was something society would struggle to make sense of at first. On top of that, the mystery surrounding what really happened inside the hive-mind had left just enough room for the public to create its own versions of the Anonymous narrative, just as when Topiary had spun a vague

…

slate on which a host of creative Internet memes, such as Lolcats, were born, and is widely considered to be the birthplace of the Anonymous “hive-mind.” Many Anonymous supporters say they first found Anonymous through /b/. It is infamous for its lack of moderators. Black hat: Someone who uses knowledge of

Generation A

by Douglas Coupland · 2 Jan 2009 · 312pp · 78,053 words

and your ideas have begun to morph into each other’s? It’s a terrible pun, but the five of you are turning into a hive mind. I think it would have happened to you anyway—your minds are somehow rigged to melt together; it’s the storytelling chemical you make—but

A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload

by Cal Newport · 2 Mar 2021 · 350pp · 90,898 words

Principle 5. The Process Principle 6. The Protocol Principle 7. The Specialization Principle Conclusion: The Twenty-First-Century Moonshot Acknowledgments Notes Index Introduction The Hyperactive Hive Mind In late 2010, Nish Acharya arrived in Washington, DC, ready to work. President Barack Obama had appointed Acharya to be his director of innovation

…

new way of working it introduced. To help us better understand this new workflow, I’ll give it a name and definition: The Hyperactive Hive Mind A workflow centered around ongoing conversation fueled by unstructured and unscheduled messages delivered through digital communication tools like email and instant messenger services. The hyperactive

…

an effective method for identifying unexpected challenges and quickly coordinating responses. But as I’ll argue in part 1 of this book, the hyperactive hive mind workflow enabled by email—although natural—has turned out to be spectacularly ineffective. The explanation for this failure can be found in our psychology.

…

applying attention capital theory to rebuild the workflows that drive organizational, team, and individual work in this direction—moving us away from the hyperactive hive mind and toward more structured approaches that avoid the problems of constant communication detailed in part 1. Some of the ideas supporting these principles come from

…

we take seriously how human brains actually function, and seek out strategies that best complement these realities, the sooner we’ll realize that the hyperactive hive mind, though convenient, is a disastrously ineffective way to organize our efforts. This book, therefore, should not be understood as reactionary or anti-technology. To

…

large organizations. His company had seven employees working out of a London office, and they were, as Sean described it, enthusiastic practitioners of the hyperactive hive mind workflow. “We used to have Gmail opened constantly,” he told me. “Everything was handled in email.” Sean would start sending and receiving messages immediately

…

even worse than most probably realize. Email might have made certain specific actions much more efficient, but as the science will make clear, the hyperactive hive mind workflow this technology enabled has been a disaster for overall productivity. Constant, Constant Multitasking Craziness In the late 1990s, Gloria Mark enjoyed an enviable

…

, the number of different types of things we’re communicating about is also large. The modern knowledge work organization truly does operate like a hive mind—a collective intelligence of many different brains tethered electronically into a dynamic ebb and flow of information and concurrent conversations. It’s important to emphasize

…

example familiar to my professional world, consider an administrator who provides support to professors in an academic department. This admin likely operates in a hyperactive hive mind workflow, where urgent emails arrive haphazardly throughout the day. If you polled the professors in this hypothetical department, they would likely argue that this

…

anxious unease when we neglect these interactions. This matters in the office because, as we’ve documented, an unfortunate side effect of the hyperactive hive mind workflow is that it constantly exposes you to exactly this form of distress. This frenetic approach to professional collaboration generates messages faster than you can

…

would admit that there was nothing going on in that laboratory that was actually worth worrying about. The missed connections that necessarily accompany the hyperactive hive mind sound these same Paleolithic alarm bells—regardless of our best attempts to convince ourselves that this unanswered communication isn’t critical. This effect is so

…

of stress and anxiety that we can diminish if we’re willing to step away from the frenetic back-and-forth that defines the hyperactive hive mind workflow. Clarifying the Misery Mechanisms Most knowledge workers intuitively feel a sense of unhappiness emanating from their overflowing inboxes. The reason this reality hasn

…

determinism: a tool introduced for a simple purpose (to make existing communication practices more efficient) had an unexpected result (a shift toward the hyperactive hive mind style of collaboration). The speed of this transformation, which required less than a week to get rolling, underscores how powerful these forces can be once

…

It’s possible, in other words, that once you move your workplace toward this style of communication, the hyperactive property of the hyperactive hive mind workflow becomes unavoidable. Hive Mind Driver #2: The Cycle of Responsiveness Harvard Business School professor Leslie Perlow is an expert in the culture of constant connectivity that dominates the

…

. It follows that the mode of collaboration most instinctually embedded in both our genetics and our cultural memory shares the main characteristics of the hyperactive hive mind workflow. We shouldn’t be surprised, therefore, that when the introduction of low-friction messaging tools like email made similarly unstructured communication possible in

…

this size almost always feature strict chains of command. Pulling together these threads, we can weave a compelling narrative that helps explain the hyperactive hive mind’s spread. Throughout most of human history we worked together in small groups, communicating in an ad hoc fashion without any particular structure or

…

a nice example of what game theorists would call an “inefficient Nash equilibrium.” This economic trivia informs our discussions here because when the hyperactive hive mind emerged due to the drivers summarized earlier in this chapter, communication in the modern office became yet another example of Lloyd’s thought experiment in

…

on the world of industrial manufacturing, will provide an immensely useful analogy for understanding what it will take to escape the miseries of the hyperactive hive mind workflow. * * * — In the fall of 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported on a German entrepreneur named Lasse Rheingans, who had adopted a novel

…

with notes and design files, one-off messages, and single emails that talked about multiple different projects.” Like many business owners feeling overwhelmed by the hive mind workflow, Devesh first attempted to fix the problem by making the communication more efficient. Among other steps, he switched the company to Gmail, which

…

capital principle in your own organization or professional life. Build Structures Around Autonomy In chapter 3, we tackled a key question: If the hyperactive hive mind is so ineffective, why is it so popular? Ironically, a major part of the answer I provided concerned the very same person who identified

…

workflow, is one we defined in the introduction of this book. It describes how these fundamental activities are identified, assigned, coordinated, and reviewed. The hyperactive hive mind is a workflow, as is Devesh’s project board system. If work execution is what generates value, then workflows are what structure these efforts. Once

…

When I told Devesh’s story to other knowledge workers, they predictably raised concerns. When they imagined shifting their own organizations away from the hyperactive hive mind and toward something more structured, like Devesh’s project board–based workflow, they easily conjured potential issues. Losing the ability to grab people’s

…

like promoting better “etiquette” surrounding messaging—as these toothless suggestions prevent anyone from having to confront the hardships that follow real changes to the hyperactive hive mind status quo. Imagine you want to make a major change to your own or your organization’s workflow. How can you avoid the inconveniences

…

at odds with my advice for applying the principle to individuals. The former emphasizes the need for clear communication about the workflows replacing the hyperactive hive mind, while the latter suggests you keep these changes largely private. A closer look, however, reveals that both approaches are based on the same principle

…

messy human personalities trying to figure out how to successfully collaborate. The three chapters that follow look closely at specific strategies for replacing the hyperactive hive mind with much more effective workflows. The value of these detailed approaches, however, will be greatly diminished if you don’t first master the subtle

…

way: they focus on people, not processes. As a result, the knowledge sector prefers to leave these processes unspecified, relying instead on the hyperactive hive mind workflow to informally organize their work. For sure, a major explanation for this process aversion is the insistence on knowledge worker autonomy that we explored

…

like email, which do a poor job of structuring information and quickly become cluttered. A fair concern is whether these card conversations might allow hyperactive hive mind–style unstructured messaging to sneak back into your organization. Based on what I observed, however, the experience of card conversation was significantly different from

…

the experience of hive mind chatter. Devesh, for example, described his shift from email to card conversations as “flipping the script” on communication. When you have a general email

…

been allocating his time.8 * * * — The success of Personal Kanban among productivity aficionados underscores an important reality for anyone looking to escape the hyperactive hive mind: task boards are not just effective for coordinating work among teams, but can be incredibly effective in making sense of your individual obligations—even if

…

into your individual professional responsibilities. Whether you’re deploying complex automation or just following handcrafted procedures, these processes will reduce your dependence on the hyperactive hive mind workflow and reward you with extra cognitive energy and mental peace. Make automatic what you can reasonably make automatic, and only then worry about

…

of these buckets in which at least some effort was expended toward the coordination task. To stick with our consulting firm scenario, the hyperactive hive mind protocol for evaluating new client requests probably generates several dozen back-and-forth emails, with each message corrupting a different five-minute bucket, creating

…

from drowning. This reality creates a nasty, productivity-sapping circularity. When you’re overloaded, you’re forced to fall back on the flexibility of the hive mind. This workflow, however, leads to even more fragmentation of your attention, making you even less efficient in getting things done. The result: overload increases!

…

overwhelmed state of inefficient desperation, where the idea that you can somehow carefully engineer smarter workflows seems impossible. If we want to tame the hyperactive hive mind, therefore, we must first tame the trend toward non-specialization. By reducing the number of different obligations you’re required to tackle, you’ll

…

transform your effectiveness or that of your organization. This chapter asks you to embrace the following principle as a crucial step toward moving past the hive mind: The Specialization Principle In the knowledge sector, working on fewer things, but doing each thing with more quality and accountability, can be the foundation

…

stick under these new demands. Returning to a culture that allows more separation between specialized and administrative work is crucial to moving past the hyperactive hive mind and significantly improving productivity. This doesn’t mean, however, that we must retreat to the lumbering Mad Men–style support setups that ruled before

…

made it feasible for specialists to handle more support work, tackling an overwhelming number of obligations became the new norm, helping to cement the hyperactive hive mind workflow as the best option for wrangling our hectic professional lives. Reimagining work, therefore, first requires more specialization. Let the knowledge workers with value

…

I was able to gather relevant research, and his editorial guidance helped improve both my thinking and writing on these topics. Notes Introduction: The Hyperactive Hive Mind 1. Chris Anderson, Free: The Future of a Radical Price (New York: Hyperion, 2009), 4. 2. Radicati Group, Inc., Email Statistics Report, 2015–2019,

…

for, 202–3 viruses on, xi–xiv concentration and creative types, 28–30 erosion of, 27–28 George Marshall’s commitment to, 22–25 hyperactive hive mind workflow and, 29–30 importance of, xv, 22–25 undervaluing of, xiv–xv See also focus Concept of the Corporation (Drucker), 89 conferencing software,

…

76, 112 and social connections, 42–43 and technology, 74–76 human soul, 39 hunter-gatherers, 39–42, 44, 85 hunters, Paleolithic, 84–88 hyperactive hive mind workflow alternatives to, 61, 92–93, 133–34, 194, 222 benefits of, xvii–xviii, 31, 115, 260 and brains’ social circuits, xviii–xix and

…

current state of, xv deploying capital and, 121 Drucker’s autonomy theory and, 111 economic effectiveness of, 103 and energy-minimizing email, 190 and hyperactive hive mind, xvii–xix, 10, 115 latent productivity in, xix–xx process aversion of, 140–42 undervalues concentration, xiv–xv knowledge work coining of the term,

…

Nancy, 80 Macdonell, Robby, 10 mail carts, xiii, 64–65, 247 makers attention switching and, 19–20 Graham’s vision of, 19–20, 28 hyperactive hive mind and, 30–31 reduced productivity of, 30–31 “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” (Graham), 19–20 management 30x rule for, 174 founding modern era

…

“design sprints” and, 236–38 “do less, do better,” 226–34, 256 extreme programming (XP) and, 222–27, 233–34, 241, 246 and hyperactive hive mind, 238 and non-specialized work, 104, 217–20 outsource time-consuming tasks, 228–31 pair programming and, 224–26 and producing value, 251–53 productivity

…

into five-minute buckets, 12, 184–85 divided into working spheres, 57–58 eight-hours long, 225–26 five-hours long, 100–102 structured around hive mind, xvii workflows, xix–xxii adding complexity to, 117–18 alternative ones, 61, 194 broken ones, 91 changing work execution and, 124–27 creating better

…

-focused, 154, 162 structured, 137–40, 150–51, 249 tracking revenue of, 114 transformed by email, xvi–xvii unstructured, 194, 258 See also hyperactive hive mind workflow; project-board workflow workloads deep-to-shallow work ratios and, 243–44 increased by email, 55–61 keeping track of, 56–57 overloaded, 56

Ten Billion Tomorrows: How Science Fiction Technology Became Reality and Shapes the Future

by Brian Clegg · 8 Dec 2015 · 315pp · 92,151 words

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

by Clay Shirky · 28 Feb 2008 · 313pp · 95,077 words

Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Story of Anonymous

by Gabriella Coleman · 4 Nov 2014 · 457pp · 126,996 words

Death of the Liberal Class

by Chris Hedges · 14 May 2010 · 422pp · 89,770 words

The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives

by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler · 28 Jan 2020 · 501pp · 114,888 words

The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can't Think the Way We Do

by Erik J. Larson · 5 Apr 2021

The Knowledge Illusion

by Steven Sloman · 10 Feb 2017 · 313pp · 91,098 words

Always Day One: How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay on Top Forever

by Alex Kantrowitz · 6 Apr 2020 · 260pp · 67,823 words

Platform Scale: How an Emerging Business Model Helps Startups Build Large Empires With Minimum Investment

by Sangeet Paul Choudary · 14 Sep 2015 · 302pp · 73,581 words

Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization

by Edward Slingerland · 31 May 2021

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism

by Fred Turner · 31 Aug 2006 · 339pp · 57,031 words

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

by Christopher Paolini · 14 Sep 2020 · 1,171pp · 309,640 words

Wireless

by Charles Stross · 7 Jul 2009

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

by Kevin Kelly · 6 Jun 2016 · 371pp · 108,317 words

Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet

by Varun Sivaram · 2 Mar 2018 · 469pp · 132,438 words

Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts

by Jill Abramson · 5 Feb 2019 · 788pp · 223,004 words

The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move

by Sonia Shah

The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

by Ross Douthat · 25 Feb 2020 · 324pp · 80,217 words

Common Knowledge?: An Ethnography of Wikipedia

by Dariusz Jemielniak · 13 May 2014 · 312pp · 93,504 words

The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics

by Ben Buchanan · 25 Feb 2020 · 443pp · 116,832 words

World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech

by Franklin Foer · 31 Aug 2017 · 281pp · 71,242 words

12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next

by Jeanette Winterson · 15 Mar 2021 · 256pp · 73,068 words

Microserfs

by Douglas Coupland · 14 Feb 1995

This Machine Kills Secrets: Julian Assange, the Cypherpunks, and Their Fight to Empower Whistleblowers

by Andy Greenberg · 12 Sep 2012 · 461pp · 125,845 words

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley

by Corey Pein · 23 Apr 2018 · 282pp · 81,873 words

10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less

by Garett Jones · 4 Feb 2020 · 303pp · 75,192 words

The Twittering Machine

by Richard Seymour · 20 Aug 2019 · 297pp · 83,651 words

Thinking Machines: The Inside Story of Artificial Intelligence and Our Race to Build the Future

by Luke Dormehl · 10 Aug 2016 · 252pp · 74,167 words

The Smart Wife: Why Siri, Alexa, and Other Smart Home Devices Need a Feminist Reboot

by Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy · 14 Apr 2020

Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better

by Clive Thompson · 11 Sep 2013 · 397pp · 110,130 words

The Terraformers

by Annalee Newitz · 404pp · 118,036 words

Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth

by A. O. Scott · 9 Feb 2016 · 218pp · 65,422 words

The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health--And How We Must Adapt

by Sinan Aral · 14 Sep 2020 · 475pp · 134,707 words

What to Think About Machines That Think: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Age of Machine Intelligence

by John Brockman · 5 Oct 2015 · 481pp · 125,946 words

Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead

by Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman · 22 Sep 2016

Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground

by Kevin Poulsen · 22 Feb 2011 · 264pp · 79,589 words

Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto

by Mark Helprin · 19 Apr 2009 · 272pp · 83,378 words

Smart Cities, Digital Nations

by Caspar Herzberg · 13 Apr 2017

The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era

by Craig Nelson · 25 Mar 2014 · 684pp · 188,584 words

More Blood, More Sweat and Another Cup of Tea

by Tom Reynolds · 30 Apr 2009 · 376pp · 93,160 words

Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics

by Elle Reeve · 9 Jul 2024

The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth

by Jonathan Rauch · 21 Jun 2021 · 446pp · 109,157 words

Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work

by Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal · 21 Feb 2017 · 407pp · 90,238 words

The Rapture of the Nerds

by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross · 3 Sep 2012 · 311pp · 94,732 words

Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

by Hugh Howey · 2 Oct 2017 · 339pp · 105,856 words

A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity and a Shared Earth

by Chris Smaje · 14 Aug 2020 · 375pp · 105,586 words

The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age

by Astra Taylor · 4 Mar 2014 · 283pp · 85,824 words

Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net's Impact on Our Minds and Future

by John Brockman · 18 Jan 2011 · 379pp · 109,612 words

Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley

by Antonio Garcia Martinez · 27 Jun 2016 · 559pp · 155,372 words

2312

by Kim Stanley Robinson · 22 May 2012 · 561pp · 167,631 words

New York 2140

by Kim Stanley Robinson · 14 Mar 2017 · 693pp · 204,042 words

Children of Time

by Adrian Tchaikovsky · 31 May 2015 · 528pp · 157,969 words

The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data

by Michael P. Lynch · 21 Mar 2016 · 230pp · 61,702 words

On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything

by Nate Silver · 12 Aug 2024 · 848pp · 227,015 words

MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World

by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams · 28 Sep 2010 · 552pp · 168,518 words

Avogadro Corp

by William Hertling · 9 Apr 2014 · 247pp · 71,698 words

4th Rock From the Sun: The Story of Mars

by Nicky Jenner · 5 Apr 2017 · 294pp · 87,986 words

The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Businesses, and Our Lives

by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen · 22 Apr 2013 · 525pp · 116,295 words

Ancestral Night

by Elizabeth Bear · 5 Mar 2019 · 596pp · 163,351 words

Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door -- Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy

by Christopher Mims · 13 Sep 2021 · 385pp · 112,842 words

Data and the City

by Rob Kitchin,Tracey P. Lauriault,Gavin McArdle · 2 Aug 2017

An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management

by Will Larson · 19 May 2019 · 227pp · 63,186 words

What Technology Wants

by Kevin Kelly · 14 Jul 2010 · 476pp · 132,042 words

Emergence

by Steven Johnson · 329pp · 88,954 words

Galactic North

by Alastair Reynolds · 14 Feb 2006 · 436pp · 124,373 words

Excession

by Iain M. Banks · 14 Jan 2011 · 298pp · 151,238 words

Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations

by Nicholas Carr · 5 Sep 2016 · 391pp · 105,382 words

The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction

by Matthew B. Crawford · 29 Mar 2015 · 351pp · 100,791 words

Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet?

by Pete Dyson and Rory Sutherland · 15 Jan 2021 · 342pp · 72,927 words

Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan's Army Conquered the Web

by Cole Stryker · 14 Jun 2011 · 226pp · 71,540 words

Zero History

by William Gibson · 6 Sep 2010 · 457pp · 112,439 words

Nexus

by Ramez Naam · 16 Dec 2012 · 502pp · 124,794 words

The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything

by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey · 27 Feb 2018 · 348pp · 97,277 words

Who Owns the Future?

by Jaron Lanier · 6 May 2013 · 510pp · 120,048 words

Scotland’s Jesus: The Only Officially Non-Racist Comedian

by Frankie Boyle · 23 Oct 2013

Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks

by Ken Jennings · 19 Sep 2011 · 367pp · 99,765 words

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World

by Naomi Klein · 11 Sep 2023

Trees on Mars: Our Obsession With the Future

by Hal Niedzviecki · 15 Mar 2015 · 343pp · 102,846 words

Future Files: A Brief History of the Next 50 Years

by Richard Watson · 1 Jan 2008

Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection

by Jacob Silverman · 17 Mar 2015 · 527pp · 147,690 words

Aerotropolis

by John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay · 2 Jan 2009 · 603pp · 182,781 words

Finding Community: How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community

by Diana Leafe Christian · 14 Jun 2007

Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road

by Matthew B. Crawford · 8 Jun 2020 · 386pp · 113,709 words

Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency

by Andy Greenberg · 15 Nov 2022 · 494pp · 121,217 words

Elon Musk

by Walter Isaacson · 11 Sep 2023 · 562pp · 201,502 words

Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future

by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson · 26 Jun 2017 · 472pp · 117,093 words

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

by Amanda Montell · 14 Jun 2021 · 244pp · 73,700 words

We Are Bellingcat: Global Crime, Online Sleuths, and the Bold Future of News

by Eliot Higgins · 2 Mar 2021 · 277pp · 70,506 words

The Vortex: A True Story of History's Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation

by Scott Carney and Jason Miklian · 28 Mar 2022 · 553pp · 153,028 words

Aiming High: Masayoshi Son, SoftBank, and Disrupting Silicon Valley

by Atsuo Inoue · 18 Nov 2021 · 295pp · 89,441 words

The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World

by Max Fisher · 5 Sep 2022 · 439pp · 131,081 words

The Deepest Map

by Laura Trethewey · 15 May 2023

The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth

by Michael Spitzer · 31 Mar 2021 · 632pp · 163,143 words

Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success

by Shane Snow · 8 Sep 2014 · 278pp · 70,416 words

Where Good Ideas Come from: The Natural History of Innovation

by Steven Johnson · 5 Oct 2010 · 298pp · 81,200 words

Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism

by Peter Marshall · 2 Jan 1992 · 1,327pp · 360,897 words

You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself

by David McRaney · 29 Jul 2013 · 280pp · 90,531 words

Four Battlegrounds

by Paul Scharre · 18 Jan 2023

We-Think: Mass Innovation, Not Mass Production

by Charles Leadbeater · 9 Dec 2010 · 313pp · 84,312 words

The Manager’s Path

by Camille Fournier · 7 Mar 2017

Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right

by Angela Nagle · 6 Jun 2017 · 122pp · 38,022 words

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma

by Mustafa Suleyman · 4 Sep 2023 · 444pp · 117,770 words

Singularity Rising: Surviving and Thriving in a Smarter, Richer, and More Dangerous World

by James D. Miller · 14 Jun 2012 · 377pp · 97,144 words

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History

by Kurt Andersen · 14 Sep 2020 · 486pp · 150,849 words

The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket

by Benjamin Lorr · 14 Jun 2020 · 407pp · 113,198 words

Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room

by David Weinberger · 14 Jul 2011 · 369pp · 80,355 words

The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible

by Simon Winchester · 14 Oct 2013 · 501pp · 145,097 words

Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age

by Steven Johnson · 14 Jul 2012 · 184pp · 53,625 words

Hacking Politics: How Geeks, Progressives, the Tea Party, Gamers, Anarchists and Suits Teamed Up to Defeat SOPA and Save the Internet

by David Moon, Patrick Ruffini, David Segal, Aaron Swartz, Lawrence Lessig, Cory Doctorow, Zoe Lofgren, Jamie Laurie, Ron Paul, Mike Masnick, Kim Dotcom, Tiffiniy Cheng, Alexis Ohanian, Nicole Powers and Josh Levy · 30 Apr 2013 · 452pp · 134,502 words