Dunbar number

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Liars and Outliers: How Security Holds Society Together by Bruce Schneier

Abraham Maslow, airport security, Alvin Toffler, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Brian Krebs, Broken windows theory, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, commoditize, corporate governance, crack epidemic, credit crunch, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Graeber, desegregation, don't be evil, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Douglas Hofstadter, Dunbar number, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Future Shock, Garrett Hardin, George Akerlof, hydraulic fracturing, impulse control, income inequality, information security, invention of agriculture, invention of gunpowder, iterative process, Jean Tirole, John Bogle, John Nash: game theory, joint-stock company, Julian Assange, language acquisition, longitudinal study, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, microcredit, mirror neurons, moral hazard, Multics, mutually assured destruction, Nate Silver, Network effects, Nick Leeson, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, patent troll, phenotype, pre–internet, principal–agent problem, prisoner's dilemma, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, rent-seeking, RFID, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Ronald Coase, security theater, shareholder value, slashdot, statistical model, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, technological singularity, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Timothy McVeigh, too big to fail, traffic fines, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, ultimatum game, UNCLOS, union organizing, Vernor Vinge, WikiLeaks, World Values Survey, Y2K, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game

Eighty percent of our brain is neocortex, compared to 50% in our nearest existing relative and 10% to 40% in non-primate mammals.13 And as our neocortex grew, the complexity of our social interactions grew as well. Primatologist Robin Dunbar has studied primate group sizes. Dunbar examined 38 different primate genera, and found that the volume of the neocortex correlates with the size of the troop. He established that the mean human group size is 150.14 This is the Dunbar number: the number of people with whom we can have explicit and personal encounters, whose history we can remember, and with whom we can experience some level of intimacy.15 Of course, it's an average. You personally might be able to keep track of more or fewer. This number appears regularly in human society: it's the estimated size of a Neolithic farming village; the size at which Hittite settlements split; and it's a basic unit in professional armies, from Roman times to the present day.

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Any sort of governmental structure: forget it. It doesn't matter how big your neocortex is or how abstractly you can reason: unless you can trust others, your species will forever remain stuck in the Stone Age. The answer to that question will make use of the concepts presented in this chapter—the Red Queen Effect, the Dunbar number, our natural intelligence and murderousness—and it will make use of security. It turns out that trust in society isn't easy, and that we're still getting it wrong. Chapter 3 The Evolution of Cooperation Two of the most successful species on the planet are humans and leafcutter ants of Brazil.

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Stage three is much more recent; around 500,000 or 400,000 years ago, humans became dependent on group hunting, and started exhibiting long-term care for the injured and the infirm. Stage four occurred in modern humans starting 120,000 years ago, when compassion extended to strangers, animals, and sometimes even objects: religious objects, antiques, family heirlooms, etc. It probably didn't extend much past groups bigger than the Dunbar number of 150 until the invention of agriculture, about 10,000 years ago—I guess that's a fifth stage. Still, that doesn't tell us how or why it eventually did. There are two basic types of non-kin cooperation. The first is mutualism.10 In some species, unrelated individuals cooperate because together they can perform tasks they couldn't do by themselves.

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport

Black Lives Matter, Burning Man, Cal Newport, data science, Donald Trump, Dunbar number, financial independence, game design, Hacker News, index fund, Jaron Lanier, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, lifelogging, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Mr. Money Mustache, Pepto Bismol, pre–internet, price discrimination, race to the bottom, ride hailing / ride sharing, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, TED Talk

Jennifer also uses Facebook significantly less than the average user by maintaining a simple rule regarding the service: it’s only for close friends and relatives, and for occasionally connecting with influencers. “In the early years, I used to accept friend requests from anyone,” they said. “But I don’t think we’re really supposed to be connected to so many people so frequently.” Jennifer now tries to keep friend engagement* below the Dunbar Number of 150—a theoretical limit for the number of people a human can successfully keep track of in their social circles. Jennifer does not, for the most part, interact with professional colleagues on Facebook: “If I need to connect with a colleague, I’ll stop by their office or chat after work.” Jennifer also thinks it’s not the right platform to keep up with news (more soon on what Jennifer prefers for this purpose) or to debate issues, noting “the civility issues on that platform have gotten difficult.”

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., 157 two-tier approach to, 151 Cooper, Anderson, 9–10 craft, 171–72, 177–82, 194–98 Crawford, Matthew, 179–81, 195–96 CrossFit, 187–89 Day, Benjamin, 215 Dead Poets Society, 37 Dean, Howard, 123 Deep Work (Newport), x, 124, 180–81, 206n, 224 Denizet-Lewis, Benoit, 107–8 depression, 106 Desan, Philippe, 191 Descartes, René, 96 Deters, Fenne, 138 Dewane, David, 191 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), 16 digital communication tools, 103–4, 130, 136, 142–44 approval clicks in, 9, 18, 21, 136, 138, 140–42, 151–56, 180 combining analog conversation with, 151 constant connectivity, 104–9 conversation-centric communication philosophy and, 148–49, 154 and conversation vs. connection, 144, 146, 150, 154 human sociality and, 150–51 psychological well-being and, xi–xii, 104–9, 136–41 smarter use of, 146 see also digital devices and internet; email; messaging tools; social media digital declutter, xvi–xvii, 59–81, 253 bans on technologies in, 66–68 convenient vs. critical technologies in, 65 defining technology rules for, 63, 64–68 detox in, 62, 70–71, 74, 75 and losing taste for technologies, 79–80 low-value digital distractions in, 168–69 mistakes in implementing, 62 operating procedures in, 66–68, 76–77, 80–81 optional technologies in, 63–65, 68, 69, 75 participants in experiment with, 61–67, 69–75, 78–81 process for, 60 and rediscovering important activities, 71–74 reintroducing technologies in, 60, 70, 71, 75–81 thirty-day break in, 60, 69–74 digital devices and internet, 6–9 addictive properties of, xi, xii, xvi, 9–25, 143, 167 attention economy and, 9, 12, 19, 48, 57–58, 59, 76, 199–200, 215–18, 220–21, 223, 226, 228–30, 238, 246, 254 autonomy and, 8, 24, 57–58, 214, 221, 222 blocking websites and applications, 225–26 and drive for social approval, 17, 20–23 exhaustion from using, x–xi, xii intermittent positive reinforcement and, 17–21 leisure renaissance and, 192–93 modest hacks and tips for reducing use of, xiii–xiv, 27–28, 31, 59 and negativity of online discussions, xii, 143 neutrality of, 10 and philosophy of technology use, xiv, 28 temporary break from, 166–69 time spent using, 104 see also computers; digital communication tools; smartphones; social media digital minimalism, xv–xvi, xviii, 25, 27–58, 59, 220–22, 252–54 cost-benefit analyses in, 29 and cost of clutter, 35–43 defined, 28 implementing, see digital declutter intentionality in, 36, 49–57, 193 optimization in, 36, 43–49, 60 principles of, 35–37 quality of life and, 253 real-world examples of, 30–35 values and, 28–36 see also attention resistance movement diminishing returns, law of, 43–46 dopamine, 17–18, 19 Doro PhoneEasy, 242–43 Drunk Tank Pink (Alter), 14 Dunbar Number, 232–33 eBay, 216 economics: law of diminishing returns in, 43–46 standard theory of, 39, 41 Thoreau’s theory of, 36–43 Eisenhower, Dwight, 126 electricity and electronic communication, 249–52 email, 145, 147, 233–34 digital declutter and, 64, 67 Emancipation Proclamation, 90–91, 126 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 120 empathy, 144, 145 Enlightenment, 95 Erwin, Michael, 92–95, 125, 126 evolution, 135–36, 142, 153, 178, 251 exercise groups, 184–89, 206 existential despair, 166 ExxonMobil, 216 F3 (Fitness, Fellowship and Faith), 185–87, 189 Facebook, xi, 7, 20, 29, 31, 33–34, 77, 199–200, 213–20, 232–33, 251 algorithms of, 152 attention engineering deployed by, 19 blog series of, 137–38, 213–14 digital declutter and, 65 Dunbar Number and, 232–33 early adopters of, 3–6 as foundational technology, 218–20 Ginsberg and Burke article and, 214, 218–21 “Like” button on, 18, 21, 151–56 Messenger, 65, 156 mission of, 48–49, 103 mobile version of, 222, 223, 225 notification symbol for, 19 psychological well-being and, 137–38, 139–40 Russian, 213 tagging in, 22–23 time spent on, 6, 33–34, 199, 217, 219, 224, 233 FaceTime, 65, 149 feedback, 18, 20–22 Ferriss, Tim, 237 FI (financial independence) community, 169–74 Fogg, BJ, 11 Fort Sumter, 87 Franklin, Benjamin, 96, 203–5 Freedom, 225–27, 229 French, John, 89 FriendFeed, 151–52 Frugalwoods, 172, 192 games: board, 182–84, 189 video, 63–64, 68, 171, 177, 181, 183, 184 Garrow, David, 95 Gettysburg Address, 90 Gibbon, Edward, 96 Ginsberg, David, 214, 218–21 Glassman, Greg, 188–89 Gmail, 11 Google, 11, 12, 216, 217, 245 Harris and, 10–12 Gould, Glenn, 111 gratitude walking, 120 Grignon, Andy, 5 Gros, Frédéric, 39, 42–43, 117, 118 groups, joining, 203–6 Grygiel, Jennifer, 230–35 Hamilton Club, 174 Handmade (Rogowski), 178–79 hands-on activities, 178–79 happiness, 137–38, 140, 141, 165, 168, 194 Harris, Michael, 97–98, 167–68 Harris, Tristan, 10–13, 16, 19, 20, 22–23 Holesh, Kevin, 102 Hollier, Joe, 245, 248 Holzer, Harold, 88 Hostetler, John, 50, 53 How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (Bennett), 174–76 How to Win at College (Newport), 123 IBM, 227 iGen, 106–8 information theory, 153 Instagram, 7, 11, 75, 76, 232 art and, 34 Stories, 232 tagging in, 22–23 Instapaper, 45 intentionality: and blocking sites and apps, 229–30 in leisure time, 169–71 in technology use, 36, 49–57, 193 intermittent positive reinforcement, 17–21 internet, see digital devices and internet iPhone: release of, 4–6, 101, 216–17, 251 see also smartphones iPod, 4, 5, 100–101, 217 Irresistible (Alter), 17, 102 “I Used to Be a Human Being” (Sullivan), ix, xii, xviii, 254 Jackson, Charles, 249 Jobs, Steve, 4–6, 163 joining groups, 203–6 Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 131 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 137 journals and notebooks, 81, 122–26 Junto, 203–4 Kant, Immanuel, 97 Kelly, Kevin, 50–51, 53 Kennedy, Anthony, 92n Kethledge, Raymond, 92–95, 111, 125, 126 Kickstarter, 183, 191, 245 Kierkegaard, Søren, 97 King, Hope, 114–15 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 94–95 Kraut, Robert, 137–38 Kraybill, Donald, 51–52 Krieger, Mike, 11 Land Shark, 127–29 Lanier, Jaron, xii laptops, 244 law of diminishing returns, 43–46 Lead Yourself First (Kethledge and Erwin), 93–95, 126 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 97 leisure, xvii, 71, 165–212 Bennett Principle in, 174–76 board games, 182–84, 189 craft in, 171–72, 177–82, 194–98 doing nothing, 212 exercise groups, 184–89, 206 in FI (financial independence) community, 169–74 good life and, 165–69, 193–94 high-quality, 166, 168, 169, 192, 193, 200, 203, 206–7 joining groups, 203–6 low-quality digital distractions, 168–69, 198–203, 206, 212 passive activities in, 171 reclaiming, 165–212 renaissance in, 190–94 scheduling of, 198–203 social, 182–90 strenuous activity in, 171–74, 176–77 leisure plans, 206–12 seasonal, 207–10 weekly, 210–12 letters to yourself, 122–26 liberal humanism, 57 Library Company of Philadelphia, 204 Lieberman, Matthew, 131–35 life well lived, 29, 30, 199 leisure and, 165–69, 193–94 Light Phone, 245 “likes,” 9, 18, 21, 136, 138, 140–42, 147, 148, 151–56, 180 Lincoln, Abraham, 86–93, 111, 126 Emancipation Proclamation of, 90–91, 126 Gettysburg Address of, 90 Lincoln, Mary, 88 Lincoln, Robert, 89 Lincoln, Tad, 88–89 Lincoln’s Hat, 126 Locke, John, 96 loneliness, 98, 150 perceived social isolation (PSI) metric, 139 social media and, 137–40 low-value activities, 30 Luddism, xiv, 50, 193 Maher, Bill, 9–11, 13, 24–25 Marcus Aurelius, xv Masons, 204 Mast, Erin Carlson, 90 Master Roshambollah, 128–29 maximalist philosophy, 29, 57–58 Maynard, W.

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., 157 two-tier approach to, 151 Cooper, Anderson, 9–10 craft, 171–72, 177–82, 194–98 Crawford, Matthew, 179–81, 195–96 CrossFit, 187–89 Day, Benjamin, 215 Dead Poets Society, 37 Dean, Howard, 123 Deep Work (Newport), x, 124, 180–81, 206n, 224 Denizet-Lewis, Benoit, 107–8 depression, 106 Desan, Philippe, 191 Descartes, René, 96 Deters, Fenne, 138 Dewane, David, 191 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), 16 digital communication tools, 103–4, 130, 136, 142–44 approval clicks in, 9, 18, 21, 136, 138, 140–42, 151–56, 180 combining analog conversation with, 151 constant connectivity, 104–9 conversation-centric communication philosophy and, 148–49, 154 and conversation vs. connection, 144, 146, 150, 154 human sociality and, 150–51 psychological well-being and, xi–xii, 104–9, 136–41 smarter use of, 146 see also digital devices and internet; email; messaging tools; social media digital declutter, xvi–xvii, 59–81, 253 bans on technologies in, 66–68 convenient vs. critical technologies in, 65 defining technology rules for, 63, 64–68 detox in, 62, 70–71, 74, 75 and losing taste for technologies, 79–80 low-value digital distractions in, 168–69 mistakes in implementing, 62 operating procedures in, 66–68, 76–77, 80–81 optional technologies in, 63–65, 68, 69, 75 participants in experiment with, 61–67, 69–75, 78–81 process for, 60 and rediscovering important activities, 71–74 reintroducing technologies in, 60, 70, 71, 75–81 thirty-day break in, 60, 69–74 digital devices and internet, 6–9 addictive properties of, xi, xii, xvi, 9–25, 143, 167 attention economy and, 9, 12, 19, 48, 57–58, 59, 76, 199–200, 215–18, 220–21, 223, 226, 228–30, 238, 246, 254 autonomy and, 8, 24, 57–58, 214, 221, 222 blocking websites and applications, 225–26 and drive for social approval, 17, 20–23 exhaustion from using, x–xi, xii intermittent positive reinforcement and, 17–21 leisure renaissance and, 192–93 modest hacks and tips for reducing use of, xiii–xiv, 27–28, 31, 59 and negativity of online discussions, xii, 143 neutrality of, 10 and philosophy of technology use, xiv, 28 temporary break from, 166–69 time spent using, 104 see also computers; digital communication tools; smartphones; social media digital minimalism, xv–xvi, xviii, 25, 27–58, 59, 220–22, 252–54 cost-benefit analyses in, 29 and cost of clutter, 35–43 defined, 28 implementing, see digital declutter intentionality in, 36, 49–57, 193 optimization in, 36, 43–49, 60 principles of, 35–37 quality of life and, 253 real-world examples of, 30–35 values and, 28–36 see also attention resistance movement diminishing returns, law of, 43–46 dopamine, 17–18, 19 Doro PhoneEasy, 242–43 Drunk Tank Pink (Alter), 14 Dunbar Number, 232–33 eBay, 216 economics: law of diminishing returns in, 43–46 standard theory of, 39, 41 Thoreau’s theory of, 36–43 Eisenhower, Dwight, 126 electricity and electronic communication, 249–52 email, 145, 147, 233–34 digital declutter and, 64, 67 Emancipation Proclamation, 90–91, 126 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 120 empathy, 144, 145 Enlightenment, 95 Erwin, Michael, 92–95, 125, 126 evolution, 135–36, 142, 153, 178, 251 exercise groups, 184–89, 206 existential despair, 166 ExxonMobil, 216 F3 (Fitness, Fellowship and Faith), 185–87, 189 Facebook, xi, 7, 20, 29, 31, 33–34, 77, 199–200, 213–20, 232–33, 251 algorithms of, 152 attention engineering deployed by, 19 blog series of, 137–38, 213–14 digital declutter and, 65 Dunbar Number and, 232–33 early adopters of, 3–6 as foundational technology, 218–20 Ginsberg and Burke article and, 214, 218–21 “Like” button on, 18, 21, 151–56 Messenger, 65, 156 mission of, 48–49, 103 mobile version of, 222, 223, 225 notification symbol for, 19 psychological well-being and, 137–38, 139–40 Russian, 213 tagging in, 22–23 time spent on, 6, 33–34, 199, 217, 219, 224, 233 FaceTime, 65, 149 feedback, 18, 20–22 Ferriss, Tim, 237 FI (financial independence) community, 169–74 Fogg, BJ, 11 Fort Sumter, 87 Franklin, Benjamin, 96, 203–5 Freedom, 225–27, 229 French, John, 89 FriendFeed, 151–52 Frugalwoods, 172, 192 games: board, 182–84, 189 video, 63–64, 68, 171, 177, 181, 183, 184 Garrow, David, 95 Gettysburg Address, 90 Gibbon, Edward, 96 Ginsberg, David, 214, 218–21 Glassman, Greg, 188–89 Gmail, 11 Google, 11, 12, 216, 217, 245 Harris and, 10–12 Gould, Glenn, 111 gratitude walking, 120 Grignon, Andy, 5 Gros, Frédéric, 39, 42–43, 117, 118 groups, joining, 203–6 Grygiel, Jennifer, 230–35 Hamilton Club, 174 Handmade (Rogowski), 178–79 hands-on activities, 178–79 happiness, 137–38, 140, 141, 165, 168, 194 Harris, Michael, 97–98, 167–68 Harris, Tristan, 10–13, 16, 19, 20, 22–23 Holesh, Kevin, 102 Hollier, Joe, 245, 248 Holzer, Harold, 88 Hostetler, John, 50, 53 How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (Bennett), 174–76 How to Win at College (Newport), 123 IBM, 227 iGen, 106–8 information theory, 153 Instagram, 7, 11, 75, 76, 232 art and, 34 Stories, 232 tagging in, 22–23 Instapaper, 45 intentionality: and blocking sites and apps, 229–30 in leisure time, 169–71 in technology use, 36, 49–57, 193 intermittent positive reinforcement, 17–21 internet, see digital devices and internet iPhone: release of, 4–6, 101, 216–17, 251 see also smartphones iPod, 4, 5, 100–101, 217 Irresistible (Alter), 17, 102 “I Used to Be a Human Being” (Sullivan), ix, xii, xviii, 254 Jackson, Charles, 249 Jobs, Steve, 4–6, 163 joining groups, 203–6 Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 131 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 137 journals and notebooks, 81, 122–26 Junto, 203–4 Kant, Immanuel, 97 Kelly, Kevin, 50–51, 53 Kennedy, Anthony, 92n Kethledge, Raymond, 92–95, 111, 125, 126 Kickstarter, 183, 191, 245 Kierkegaard, Søren, 97 King, Hope, 114–15 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 94–95 Kraut, Robert, 137–38 Kraybill, Donald, 51–52 Krieger, Mike, 11 Land Shark, 127–29 Lanier, Jaron, xii laptops, 244 law of diminishing returns, 43–46 Lead Yourself First (Kethledge and Erwin), 93–95, 126 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 97 leisure, xvii, 71, 165–212 Bennett Principle in, 174–76 board games, 182–84, 189 craft in, 171–72, 177–82, 194–98 doing nothing, 212 exercise groups, 184–89, 206 in FI (financial independence) community, 169–74 good life and, 165–69, 193–94 high-quality, 166, 168, 169, 192, 193, 200, 203, 206–7 joining groups, 203–6 low-quality digital distractions, 168–69, 198–203, 206, 212 passive activities in, 171 reclaiming, 165–212 renaissance in, 190–94 scheduling of, 198–203 social, 182–90 strenuous activity in, 171–74, 176–77 leisure plans, 206–12 seasonal, 207–10 weekly, 210–12 letters to yourself, 122–26 liberal humanism, 57 Library Company of Philadelphia, 204 Lieberman, Matthew, 131–35 life well lived, 29, 30, 199 leisure and, 165–69, 193–94 Light Phone, 245 “likes,” 9, 18, 21, 136, 138, 140–42, 147, 148, 151–56, 180 Lincoln, Abraham, 86–93, 111, 126 Emancipation Proclamation of, 90–91, 126 Gettysburg Address of, 90 Lincoln, Mary, 88 Lincoln, Robert, 89 Lincoln, Tad, 88–89 Lincoln’s Hat, 126 Locke, John, 96 loneliness, 98, 150 perceived social isolation (PSI) metric, 139 social media and, 137–40 low-value activities, 30 Luddism, xiv, 50, 193 Maher, Bill, 9–11, 13, 24–25 Marcus Aurelius, xv Masons, 204 Mast, Erin Carlson, 90 Master Roshambollah, 128–29 maximalist philosophy, 29, 57–58 Maynard, W.

Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies by Geoffrey West

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, Anton Chekhov, Benoit Mandelbrot, Black Swan, British Empire, butterfly effect, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, carbon footprint, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, clean water, coastline paradox / Richardson effect, complexity theory, computer age, conceptual framework, continuous integration, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, cotton gin, creative destruction, dark matter, Deng Xiaoping, double helix, driverless car, Dunbar number, Edward Glaeser, endogenous growth, Ernest Rutherford, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Frank Gehry, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, Great Leap Forward, Guggenheim Bilbao, housing crisis, Index librorum prohibitorum, invention of agriculture, invention of the telephone, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, laissez-faire capitalism, Large Hadron Collider, Larry Ellison, Lewis Mumford, life extension, Mahatma Gandhi, mandelbrot fractal, Marc Benioff, Marchetti’s constant, Masdar, megacity, Murano, Venice glass, Murray Gell-Mann, New Urbanism, Oklahoma City bombing, Peter Thiel, power law, profit motive, publish or perish, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, Richard Florida, Salesforce, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, smart cities, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Suez canal 1869, systematic bias, systems thinking, technological singularity, The Coming Technological Singularity, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the scientific method, the strength of weak ties, time dilation, too big to fail, transaction costs, urban planning, urban renewal, Vernor Vinge, Vilfredo Pareto, Von Neumann architecture, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, wikimedia commons, working poor

The next level pretty much defines the limit of your social horizon as far as personal interactions are concerned and consists of people you might refer to as “casual friends”—you know their names and remain in social contact with them. This group typically comprises about 150 people. It is this number that is usually referred to as the Dunbar number that has gained a certain degree of attention in the popular media. You will notice that the sequence of numbers that quantify the magnitude of these successive levels of the group hierarchy—5, 15, 50, 150—are sequentially related to each other by an approximately constant scaling factor of about three.

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Even in a modest-size city of only 200,000 people there are roughly 20 billion possible relationships, and even if each person devoted just one minute a year to each relationship, they would have to spend their entire waking life relating to other people, leaving no time for anything else. Imagine extending that to a New York or Tokyo. There is also the constraint of the Dunbar number, according to which we even have difficulty sustaining any sort of meaningful relationship with more than about 150 people, let alone a couple of hundred thousand or several million. It is this restriction to a relatively small number of interactions that drives the superlinear exponent to be significantly smaller than its maximum possible value of 2.

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In what follows, I will try to explain how this is accomplished without resorting to fancy technical details by focusing on the conceptual framework and the essential features of what is involved. In this spirit, individuals are considered to be the “invariant terminal units” of social networks, meaning that on average each person operates in roughly the same amount of social and physical space in a city. This is in keeping with the implications of a “universal” Dunbar number and the space-time limitations on mobile activity in cities that we just discussed. Recall that the physical space in which we operate is spanned by space-filling fractal networks, such as roads and utility lines that service infrastructural terminal units such as houses, stores, and office buildings where we reside, work, and interact, and between which we also have to move.

The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything by Paul Vigna, Michael J. Casey

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, altcoin, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Blythe Masters, business process, buy and hold, carbon credits, carbon footprint, cashless society, circular economy, cloud computing, computer age, computerized trading, conceptual framework, content marketing, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cyber-physical system, decentralized internet, dematerialisation, disinformation, disintermediation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Dunbar number, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, failed state, fake news, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Garrett Hardin, global supply chain, Hernando de Soto, hive mind, informal economy, information security, initial coin offering, intangible asset, Internet of things, Joi Ito, Kickstarter, linked data, litecoin, longitudinal study, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, market clearing, mobile money, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Network effects, off grid, pets.com, post-truth, prediction markets, pre–internet, price mechanism, profit maximization, profit motive, Project Xanadu, ransomware, rent-seeking, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, smart meter, Snapchat, social web, software is eating the world, supply-chain management, Ted Nelson, the market place, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Turing complete, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, universal basic income, Vitalik Buterin, web of trust, work culture , zero-sum game

established its precedent-setting BitLicense: New York State Department of Financial Services, New York Codes, Rules, and Regulations, Title 23, Chapter 1, Part 200: Virtual Currencies, http://www.dfs.ny.gov/legal/regulations/adoptions/dfsp200t.pdf. Consider the Dunbar number: Maria Konnikova, “The Limits of Friendship,” New Yorker, October 7, 2014, https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-media-affect-math-dunbar-number-friendships. CHAPTER EIGHT It’s made more difficult by the fact that 2.4 billion people: Mariana Dahan and Alan Gelb, “The Identity Target in the Post-2015 Development Agenda,” World Bank, September 17, 2015, http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/ict/brief/the-identity-target-in-the-post-2015-development-agenda-connections-note-19.

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These systems have traditionally depended on the human trust that’s instilled in close friendship and kinship bonds. If everyone knows you, it’s much harder for you to stop meeting your obligations to the pool after you’ve received your payout. But that trust model imposes a physical constraint on scalability. Consider the Dunbar number—anthropologist Robin Dunbar’s theory that the highest number of stable relationships that any one person can sustain is 150. By implication it means that a savings circle has to be quite small, because every member needs to have every other member of the group within their trusted set of 150 people, the probability of which decreases consistently as the group increases in size.

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(DTCC) Devcon device identity model Digital Asset Holdings digital assets Digital Chamber of Commerce Digital Currency Initiative (MIT) digital rights management (DRM) distributed denial of service (DDOS) distributed ledger technology distributed trust systems and protocol domain name system (DNS) dot-com bubble double-entry bookkeeping. See also ledger-keeping double-spending Draper, Adam Draper, Bill Draper, Tim Draper, William H. Draper Fisher Jurvetson Dryja, Thaddeus DTCC. See Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. Dubai Dunbar, Robin Dunbar number Dyn eBay Eckblaw, Ariel Economic Space Agency (ECSA) Edge, John Eich, Brendan Elliptic energy sector Enigma code EOS Equifax ERC20 Eris Ltd. Estonia ether (ETH) Ethereum adChain ConsenSys and decentralization ether (native currency) history of initial coin offering (ICO) MedRec and open-source innovation as permissionless system Plasma and scalability and security workforce Ethereum Classic (ETC) Ethereum Enterprise Alliance Ethereum Foundation Ethereum Meetup Fabric Factom “fake news” Fibonacci Filecoin financial crisis of 2008 financial inclusion financial sector and central bank fiat digital currency and Hyperledger and permissionless systems and private blockchains and reform See also monetary and banking systems Forde, Brian forks Fourth Industrial Revolution and energy sector and Internet of Things and supply chains and trusted computing Foxconn France Francis, Pope Freakonomics (Levitt and Dubner) freemium model Friedman, Thomas Furst, Raif Gage, John Galt, Juan (pseudonym) Gamecredits Gem Gendal-Brown, Richard General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Georgia, Republic of Germany Ghana Global Blockchain Business Council Global Synchronization Log Gnosis GoBitcoin.io God Protocol Goldman Sachs Golem Google Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple (GAFA) governance and Bitcoin and blockchain technology and citizenship and Ethereum and ICANN and re-decentralization of the Internet and regulation and trust Grid Singularity Grigg, Ian Gün Sirer, Emin Harari, Yuval Noah Hardin, Garrett Hardjono, Thomas Harple, Dan hashes health care sector Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Hearn, Mike Hessel, Andrew Hong Kong Howey Test Human Genomics Hyperledger IBM ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) ICO.

The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition by Jonathan Tepper

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air freight, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, bank run, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Bob Noyce, Boston Dynamics, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, compensation consultant, computer age, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate raider, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, diversification, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Dunbar number, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, eurozone crisis, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial innovation, full employment, gentrification, German hyperinflation, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google bus, Google Chrome, Gordon Gekko, Herbert Marcuse, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, Innovator's Dilemma, intangible asset, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jevons paradox, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, late capitalism, London Interbank Offered Rate, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Maslow's hierarchy, means of production, merger arbitrage, Metcalfe's law, multi-sided market, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Network effects, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, passive investing, patent troll, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, prediction markets, prisoner's dilemma, proprietary trading, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, tech billionaire, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, too big to fail, undersea cable, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, very high income, wikimedia commons, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, you are the product, zero-sum game

Nature teaches us other lessons on why small is good. Robin Dunbar, a primate expert, was studying the connection between the size of a primate's brain and the size of their social group. He stumbled on a far more intriguing application for his research.42 He realized that the insight from monkeys applied to humans and created Dunbar's Number. The theory holds that any one person can maintain stable relationships with a maximum of 150 individuals.43 Sure, the average Facebook user has 338 “friends,”44 and the average LinkedIn user has over 500.45 But these are not friends you see or interact with regularly. Numbers larger than 150 generally require more bureaucracy and rules to maintain cohesion; for example, think of the army or any large company.

…

Dunbar focused on companies, but he also found similar results in other communities, such as Native American tribes, military units, and Amish communities.46 The bad news for productivity is that as older companies employing 10,000-plus employees now predominate employment, we're seeing the drags of exceeding the Dunbar numbers. Huge companies require increasing bureaucracy and rules to enforce cohesion. They tend to employ more people to manage the increasing number of people. Geoffrey West, in his masterful book Scale, showed that companies are like living organisms, which has profound implications for profitability and growth.

…

Haltiwanger, Steven Davis, and Scott Schuh, Job Creation and Destruction (MIT Press, 1998). 42. R.I.M. Dunbar, “Cognitive Constraints on the Structure and Dynamics of Social Networks.” Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 12, no. 1 (2008): 7–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1089-2699.12.1.7. 43. Robin Dunbar, How Many Friends Does One Person Need?: Dunbar's Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks (Faber and Faber, 2014). 44. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/03/6-new-facts-about-facebook/. 45. http://www.statista.com/statistics/264097/number-of-1st-level-connections-of-linkedin-users/. 46. https://www.npr.org/2011/06/04/136723316/dont-believe-facebook-you-only-have-150-friends. 47.

Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow by Matthew Skelton, Manuel Pais

anti-pattern, business logic, business process, call centre, cognitive load, continuous integration, Conway's law, database schema, DevOps, different worldview, Dunbar number, holacracy, information security, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Kanban, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kubernetes, Lean Startup, loose coupling, meta-analysis, microservices, Norbert Wiener, operational security, platform as a service, pull request, remote working, systems thinking, two-pizza team, web application

“The Industry Just Can’t Decide about DevOps Teams.” InfoQ, October 26, 2017. https://www.infoq.com/news/2017/10/devops-teams-good-or-bad. Beer, Stafford. Brain of the Firm, 2nd edition. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 1995. Bennett, Drake. “The Dunbar Number, From the Guru of Social Networks.” Bloomberg.com, January 11, 2013. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-01-10/the-dunbar-number-from-the-guru-of-social-networks. Bernstein, Ethan, John Bunch, Niko Canner, and Michael Lee. “Beyond the Holacracy Hype.” Harvard Business Review, July 1, 2016. https://hbr.org/2016/07/beyond-the-holacracy-hype. Bernstein, Ethan, Jesse Shore, and David Lazer.

…

Rozovsky, “Re:Work—The Five Keys to a Successful Google Team.” 4. Crawford, At opening quotes. “Amazon’s ‘Two-Pizza Teams.’” 5. Dunbar, “Neocortex Size as a Constraint on Group Size in Primates,” 469–493. 6. Snowden, “The Rule of 5, 15 & 150;” Dunbar, How Many Friends Does One Person Need?; Bennett, “The Dunbar Number, From the Guru of Social Networks;” Burgess, Thinking in Promises, 87. 7. Snowden, “The Rule of 5, 15 & 150;” Karlgaard and Malone, Team Genius, 201–205. 8. Lewis, “Microservices and the Inverse Conway Manoeuvre.” 9. Munns, “Chris Munns, DevOps @ Amazon.” 10. Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month. 11.

Writing on the Wall: Social Media - the First 2,000 Years by Tom Standage

An Inconvenient Truth, Bill Duvall, British Empire, Dunbar number, Edmond Halley, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Evgeny Morozov, invention of the printing press, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, knowledge worker, Leonard Kleinrock, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Mohammed Bouazizi, New Journalism, packet switching, place-making, Republic of Letters, sexual politics, social intelligence, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, yellow journalism

Yet the modern equivalents of the social groups in which primate brains evolved, and the grooming behavior that bound them together, can be found right under our noses. When Dunbar analyzed the brain sizes and group sizes for apes he concluded that, given the size of the human neocortex, the average group size for humans should be 148, which he rounded to 150. This number, which has become known as the “Dunbar number,” does indeed seem to recur frequently in human societies. It is the average population of a hunter-gatherer clan, of the earliest farming settlements in the ancient Near East, and of many villages recorded in the Domesday Book, a survey carried out in England in 1086. More fundamentally it is, Dunbar believes, the largest group size in which it is possible for everyone to know everyone else.

…

This may explain why the Hutterites, a community of Christians who live in rural communes, have long chosen to split their communities when they exceed 150 people. They argue that maintaining order in a group any larger than that re { margin-top: 1.5 b with quires a police force; but below the 150-person limit, order can be maintained by peer pressure alone, because everyone knows each other. The Dunbar number is also the typical size of a military company, which generally includes between 120 and 180 individuals. A company in which everyone knows everyone else is a much more effective fighting unit. The vast majority of Facebook users also turn out to have between 120 and 130 friends. Of course, some Facebook users have collected many more online “friends” than that.

…

Google, the Internet giant that dominates online search and advertising, launched its own social network, called Google+, in 2010. Instagram, a photo-sharing take on Twitter, was acquired by Facebook in 2012 for more than seven hundred million dollars. Pinterest lets users collect and share images in digital scrapbooks, or pinboards. Path is a mobile-only social network that limits users to the “Dunbar number” of one hundred and fifty friends. Medium, the latest venture from Evan Williams, is akin to both a magazine and a shared blogging platform. Branch is a discussion platform that allows more structured exchanges of longer posts than Twitter does. Every week, it seems, a new variation on social networking, sharing, and publishing appears.

Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World by Gaia Vince

3D printing, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, charter city, circular economy, clean water, colonial exploitation, coronavirus, COVID-19, decarbonisation, degrowth, Donald Trump, Dunbar number, European colonialism, failed state, gentrification, global pandemic, Global Witness, green new deal, Haber-Bosch Process, high-speed rail, housing crisis, ice-free Arctic, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invention of the printing press, job automation, joint-stock company, Kim Stanley Robinson, labour mobility, load shedding, lockdown, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, mass incarceration, mega-rich, megacity, negative emissions, new economy, ocean acidification, old age dependency ratio, open borders, Patri Friedman, Peace of Westphalia, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, place-making, planetary scale, plyscraper, polynesian navigation, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, rewilding, Rishi Sunak, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, special economic zone, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, undersea cable, urban planning, urban sprawl, white flight, women in the workforce, working-age population, zero-sum game, Zipcar

These alliances helped people to survive hardship and feed and defend themselves, but most of us can only keep track of social interactions with around 150 individuals – the so-called Dunbar number. Anthropologist Robin Dunbar discovered a ratio between primate brain size and the number of individuals in their group – which corresponds, he theorized, to a cognitive limit for social complexity. The human number of 150 turns out to be remarkably consistent across an array of social groupings, from hunter-gatherer societies to twentieth-century Christmas card lists. The way our societies grew past this Dunbar number was through the mechanism of hierarchies. Several villages banded together under one chief; several chiefdoms were then banded under a higher chief, and so on.

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Kung peoples Kutupalong refugee camp, Bangladesh Kyrgyzstan Lagos Lake Chad Lammy, David land ownership language/linguistics; language classes for new arrivals; and nation state Laos Las Vegas Latin America: Amazon region; first nation states in; fragile social systems in; impact of climate emergency; mega-El Niño (1997–8); migrants in Parla, Spain; rivers fed by glaciers; rural to urban migration League of Nations Leipzig liberalism Libya Lima livestock farming: by drone; feeding of animals; impact of drought; inhumane treatment of animals; insects as feed; land and water used for; meat and dairy subsidies; need for huge reduction in Ljubljana, Slovenia locust plagues London Macau Maillard chemical reaction maize production, global Malacca Straits Malaysia Maldives Mali Manchester Mangroves Marijuana marine life: fish populations; impact of global warming; starved of oxygen by algae marshes Mayan civilization Mayors Migration Council McCarthy, Kate McCay, Adam McConnell, Ed Medellín, Colombia media, prejudice against migrants Mediterranean Mekong River Melbourne, Pixel Building Merkel, Angela Mesopotamia Met Office, UK, methane Mexico Mexico City Miami Micronesians Middle East migrant cities: the Arctic as new region for; charter cities option; and circulation of community resources; ‘climate haven’ cities; creation of entirely new cities; as cultural factories; environmental sustainability; evidence of decline of tribalism in; expanding existing cities; in the new north; planning future cities; repurposing/adaptation of; successful urban development/planning in; as synergistic; training for rural migrants; water-management infrastructure migrants/immigrants: arrival in family groups; ‘Bangla’ communities in London; contribution to global GDP; creation of active markets by; distinction between refugees and; dominant hostile narratives of in West; ‘economic migrant’ term; evidence of decline in hostility towards; harnessing potential of; immigrant inclusion programmes; as indentured labour; internal migration; Boris Johnson’s language on; language classes for; levels of patriotism of; living in slums/shanty towns; mentoring and support for; as percentage of global population; racist and prejudicial tropes about; returning to origin countries; seasonal; situations of appalling abuse/danger; state-sponsored support needed for migration: and advantageous genetic modifications; barriers to today; as benefitting everyone; controlled by city authorities; as deeply interwoven with cooperation; and diversified genes/culture; evidence of decline of anti-immigrant feeling; free movement ends in twentieth century; and historic climate change; historical; human displacement at record levels; inherited routes and channels; and mental illness; as not reduced by aid; reluctance to move; and skin colour; of stuff/resources; as survival strategy used widely in nature; as valid and essential part of human nature; world’s major cities created by migration, arguments against/fears around: fears around crime and violence; and jobs; long evolutionary roots to prejudice; in the media; populist politicians; pressure on inadequate host services; prospect of radical change; resting on true/pure national identity idea; security/terrorism issues; and welfare systems migration, climate-driven: Covid cooperation as hopeful example; due to flooding; and geopolitical mindset; global agreement on pathways needed; hypothetical scenarios/models enabling; as inevitable; Kiribati’s ‘migration with dignity’ programme; mass movement already under way; move to higher elevations; national and regional relocation schemes; need for strong nation-states; need to plan practically now; numbers affected today; predicted future numbers; and Refugee Convention (1951); risk of domination by wealthy elites; as solution not problem; speed of movement of climate niches; water issues to be main driver migration, urban; access to health and education; community sponsorship models; family retention of farmland; and intensive infrastructure development; as most effective route out of poverty; population fall due to; role of business in migrant integration; from rural areas; successful management of; as unplanned and iterative; in the West (1850–1910); and workforce shortages in global north Miller, David mineral supples/extraction mining industry Mongla (Bangladesh) Mongolian steppes Morocco Mumbai, mussels Myanmar Nairobi Nansen, Fridtjof nation state: Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’; claims that country is ‘too full’; first created by revolutionaries; and genetic variation; and geopolitical mindset; and language; leases/purchases of territory by; model as often failing; nationality as arbitrary line drawn on map; need for reinvention of; as norm after First World War; and system of borders; translocation of existing nation states National Health Service (UK) national identity: and anti-immigrant feeling; and bureaucracy; creation of first nation states; ethnic and cultural pluralism as the norm; evidence of decline of tribalism; feelings of loss of/decline; and ideology of nationalism; lack of political meaning before end of eighteenth century; nation state as norm after First World War; need to change immigration narrative; patriotism of welcomed migrants; predicated on mythology of homogeneity; and supranational identity; transition to pan-species identity Nauru Neanderthals negative emissions technologies Netherlands; Delta Programme; Energiesprong house insulation Neukölln (Berlin) New Orleans New Story (nonprofit) New York City; ‘Big U’ seawall project; NYCID programme New Zealand; Managed Retreat and Climate Adaptation Act Newtok, Alaska Nicaragua Niger, West Africa Nigeria nitrogen Noem, Kristi nomadic pastoralism Nordic nations Normans North Korea Northern Ireland Northwest Passage Norway Notre Dame, University of, Global Adaptation Initiative nuclear power; fusion reactor technology Nusantara (Borneo) Nuuk (Greenland) Obayashi (Japanese firm) oceans/seas: acidification; as energy source in north; and enhanced weathering techniques; global warming absorbed by; impact of 4° C-hotter world; impact of carbon emissions; jellyfish explosions; long-distance migratory voyages; marine heatwaves; and migratory raiders; Miocene Era sea levels; North Atlantic currents; Northwest Passage; nutrient and oxygen circulation; ocean fertilization; release of carbon dioxide; rise in sea levels; sea grasses; sourcing food from; toxic algae blooms oil industry OmniTrax (US freight company) Ottoman Turks Overjeria, Bolivian village Paine, Thomas Pakistan Palaeo-Eskimos, Canadian palaeontology Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paris climate meeting (2015) Parla (near Madrid) passports Patagonia Patel, Priti patriotism Pearl River Delta Peatlands people-traffickers Peri, Giovanni permafrost, infrastructure built on Persian Gulf Peru Pfizer vaccine Philippines; nurses from Philistines Photios of Constantinople Phuket, Thailand Phytoplankton plains/steppes plants/vegetation: destruction of by wildfires; genetic tools to help adaptation; grass verge areas; heat damage to crops; during last ice age; move to plant-based diet; planted to increase crop yields; replanting of; rooftop vegetation/gardens plastic waste Pleistocene epoch Poland political and socioeconomic systems: in Africa; benefits to democracy of migration; cooperation during Covid upheaval; corporate food system; democracy based on inclusiveness; development of governance systems; end of multinational empires; erosion in the powers of global bodies; failure over decarbonization; far-right political parties/groups; fossil fuels as embedded in; geopolitical constraints; geopolitical implications of farming’s shift north; global institutions with enforceable powers needed; and ideal temperature question; inequality as failure of policy; institutional bias over skin-colour; institutional trust levels; international diplomacy; move from feudalism to centralized monarchy; nation-state model spreads; need for global planning over migration; need for redistributive policies; need for strong nation-states; new regional unions option; pledge of ‘strong borders’ as vote-winner; possible new political institutions/structures; post-war institutions and inequality; strong/stable institutions in north; translocation of existing nation states; and transnational rivers/’water towers’; vested interests in the rich world; Westphalian state system pollinators pollution Polynesians populist politicians Portugal postcolonial diaspora poverty see inequality and poverty Próspera ZEDE (embryonic charter city) Prussia Puerto Rico Putin, Vladimir Pygmies Qatar race and ethnicity: and anti-immigrant feeling; deliberately prejudicial policies; and demographic change; European colonialism; fallacy of biological ‘race’; heat related inequalities; unconscious bias in society; white supremacists rain gardens rainfall: altering patterns of; captured by roof gardens/storage; seeding of clouds rare earth metals Raworth, Kate, Doughnut Economics, recycling Refugee Convention (1951) refugees: from Afghanistan; barred from working; Burmese Rohingya in Bangladesh; climate change not in legal definition of; distinction between migrants and; EU seeks quota system for; hostile rhetoric towards; judgemental terms used about; and Nansen passports; privately sponsored; from Syrian crisis (2015–16) see also asylum-seekers renewable power production: as adding to, not replacing, fossil fuels; artificial light delivered by LEDs; hybrid hydro-solar power concept; hydroelectric plants; as leading job creator; and net zero targets; phenomenal rise in; refrigerant units in global south; solar-powered closed-cycle farming; storage technology; zero-carbon new-builds Republic of the Congo restoring our planet’s habitability; biodiversity loss; ‘blue carbon’; climate change-biodiversity loss as linked; cooling of global temperatures; decarbonizing measures; enhanced weathering techniques; future repopulation of abandoned regions; genetic tools to help species adapt; as global, labour-intensive task; natural restoration after human abandonment; nature guardianship in tropical regions; need for speed; negative emissions technologies; ocean fertilization; paying communities to protect ecosystems; regenerative agriculture; replanting of vegetation; solar radiation reduction tools, see also geoengineering retail services rice; SRI cultivation process rivers: drying out of; fed by glaciers; heavier rainfall as increasing flows; lack of in Gulf region; pollution discharged into; transnational Roatan, Caribbean island of Rocky Mountains Rome, ancient Romer, Paul Rotterdam rural living: and depopulation crisis; flight from drought/heat hit areas; impact of flooding; massive abandonment of in coming decades; migration to urban areas; and population expansion in Africa; remittances from urban migrants; as single largest killer today; and water scarcity Russell, Bertrand Russia: and charter cities model; depopulation crisis; economic benefits from global heating; economic sanctions on; expansion of agriculture in; infrastructure built on permafrost; invasion of Ukraine (2022); mega-heatwave (2010); migrant workforce in east; as potential area for charter cities; small-scale modular nuclear reactors in; water resources in Rwanda: Hutus and Tutsis in; special protective zones in; and UK asylum-seeker plan Salla, Finnish town of sanitation Saudi Arabia Saunders, Doug Sawiris, Naguib Scandinavia scientific discovery Scotland sea grasses Seasteading movement Seven Dials, London sex industry Shanghai sharing/circular economy Shenzhen Shyaam a-Mbul Siberia silicates Silicon Valley Silk Road Singapore sinkholes Skellefteå, Sweden slavery Slovenia slum dwellers; conditions at Kutupalong refugee camp; in Lagos; in Lima; and urban heat island effect; vulnerability to flooding social class/hierarchies: and anti-migrant attitudes; barriers erected against migration of the poorest; despair and anger of ‘left behind’ natives; development of; and gentrification; middle class migrants; myth of meritocracy; prejudice as often defensive fear-based reaction social networks; benefits of trade; cities as focal points for trade; Dunbar number; entangled ancestries/identities; forged by migrants; and knowledge flow; loss due to gentrification; migrants in family groups; and mistrust of outsiders; need for inclusive governance; and reluctance to migrate; in slum areas; social clustering of migrants; synergy created by; and unjust hierarchies; welcoming of strangers to social services see welfare systems and social services socioeconomic system see political and socioeconomic systems soil: ‘biochar’ use in; biomatter decay in; as carbon store; impact of heat on; impact of wildfires on; integrated soil-system management in China; and overuse of fertilizers; and perennial cereals; use of silicates in solar power Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative South Dakota South Korea Southern Ocean Soviet Union soya production Spain Spitalfields, London stateless persons Sudan sulphate cooling concept Sumerian civilization Sunak, Rishi Sweden Switzerland Syrian crisis (2015–16) Tabasco, Mexican state of Tabassum, Marina Tahiti Tajikistan Tanzania Tasmania textiles industry Thailand Thepdet, Supranee thermal wallpaper Thiel, Peter Thirty Years War Thwaites Glacier Tokyo Toltecs Tong, Anote Tourism trade and commerce; cities as focal points for networks; free movement of goods; free trade; global trade deals; origins and development of transport infrastructure: aviation; decarbonizing of; electric-powered vehicles; equitable access to; in global south; and limitations of battery weight; problems due to extreme heat; sail power as due a revival; in successful migrant cities; use of foot or pedal trees: American chestnut trees; cycles of burn and recovery; as ‘emissions offset’; giant sequoias; ‘green wall’ tree-planting projects; vine-like lianas Trestor, Anne Marie tropical regions: benefit of solar cooling idea; impact of climate emergency; nature guardianship in; population rise in Trump, Donald Tsipras, Alexis tundra Turkey Turkmenistan Tuvalu UAE Uganda Ukraine: maize exports; Russian invasion of (2022) United Kingdom: ageing population in; anti-immigrant feeling in; Brexit; Commonwealth Immigrants Act (1962); and Covid pandemic; destruction of peatlands in; flood defences in London; historical migration to; history of granting asylum; ‘hostile environment’ policy; impact of climate emergency; and inevitability of change; low statutory sick pay level; migratory shift to southeast; planned fusion reactors; planning laws; renewable power production; Rwanda proposal for asylum-seekers; slow processing of asylum claims; small boats in English channel; wet-farming in United Nations: Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (2018); HCR; Human Rights Council; International Labour Organization; International Organization for Migration; and Nansen Passport concept; suggested new global migration body United States: Chinese Exclusion Act (1882); ‘climate-proof’ cities in; as created from global migrants; dam removal in; demographic change in; and depopulation crisis; and extreme La Niña events; and future climate problems; Green New Deal; heat related inequalities; Homestead Act; immigrant-founded companies; impact of climate emergency; indigenous communities; and inevitability of change; lack of universal healthcare in; leases/purchases of territory by; low spending on social services; mass incarceration of Mexicans in; meat industry in; migration to since 1980s; and mineral extraction; municipal codes; net zero commitment; nineteenth century migration to; patriotism of migrants; refugee children in detention camps; resettlement project in Louisiana; rural to urban migration; seeding of clouds in; Trump’s work visa restrictions; ‘urban visas’ in; yield gap in university towns urban development/planning: Bijlmermeer (outside Amsterdam); and elderly populations; and inclusive government policies; machizukuri process in Tokyo; need for integrated high-rise/low-rise; new canals/water features to combat heat; parks/squares/public spaces; planning and zoning laws; slum clearance programmes; social capital investment in cities USAID Uttarakhand, Indian state Uzbekistan Venezuela Venice Vermont Vietnam Vikings war/violent conflict: over water scarcity; triggered by climate upheaval water, fresh: circulated, cleaned, stored and reused; closed-circuit water recycling; conflict triggered by scarcity; crop irrigation; desalination techniques; drip-irrigation systems; evaporative losses; geopolitics of water control; held in glaciers; impact of heat on supplies; importance of new water policies; inland lake systems; need for urban underground reservoirs; new waterways and river diversions; pumping of groundwater; purified sewage recycled; as resource anxiety of this century; running dry of aquifers; salination of groundwater; used for livestock; water pricing/tax policies Waterloo, Ontario weather systems: cyclonic storms in Bay of Bengal; El Niño events; extreme La Niña events; extreme weather events; Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ); monsoon regions; trade winds welfare systems and social services: access to in migrant cities; and arguments against migration; and bureaucracy; despair and anger of ‘left behind’ natives; intensive infrastructure development needed; low spending on in USA; migrant access to; migration as benefitting social care systems; punitive restrictions on new migrants Westphalia, Peace of (1648) Whales wheat production, global Wilson, E.

Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia Eghbal

Amazon Web Services, Apollo 11, barriers to entry, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), Big Tech, bitcoin, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, commoditize, commons-based peer production, context collapse, continuous integration, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Heinemeier Hansson, death of newspapers, Debian, disruptive innovation, Dunbar number, en.wikipedia.org, eternal september, Ethereum, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, Guido van Rossum, Hacker Ethic, Hacker News, Induced demand, informal economy, information security, Jane Jacobs, Jean Tirole, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Kubernetes, leftpad, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, node package manager, Norbert Wiener, pirate software, pull request, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Stallman, Ronald Coase, Ruby on Rails, side project, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social graph, software as a service, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, tacit knowledge, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Nature of the Firm, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, two-sided market, urban planning, web application, wikimedia commons, Yochai Benkler, Zimmermann PGP

., https://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/docs/micropayments-and-mental-transaction-costs.pdf. 363 Tim Carmody, “Statement of Purpose,” Amazon Chronicles, January 27, 2019, https://amazonchronicles.substack.com/p/statement-of-purpose. 364 Tim Carmody, “Unlocking the Commons: Or, the Psychoeconomics of Patronage,” Kottke.org, December 15, 2017, https://kottke.org/17/12/unlocking-the-commons-or-the-psychoeconomics-of-patronage 365 Matthew Butterick, “To Pay or Not to Pay: How I Profited from Gentle Shame,” Butterick’s Practical Typography, August 5, 2016, https://practicaltypography.com/to-pay-or-not-to-pay.html. 366 Damon Kiesow, “Journalism’s Dunbar Number: Audience Scales, Community Does Not,” Local News Lab, March 4, 2019, https://localnewslab.org/2019/03/04/journalisms-dunbar-number-audience-scales-community-does-not/. 367 Alex Kantrowitz, “Paid Email Newsletters Are Proving Themselves as a Meaningful Revenue Generator for Writers,” BuzzFeed, April 29, 2019, https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/writers-have-been-trying-to-support-online-themselves-for 368 Kevin Draper, “Why The Athletic Wants to Pillage Newspapers,” The New York Times, October 23, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/sports/the-athletic-newspapers.html. 369 David Bauder and David A.

Do Nothing: How to Break Away From Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving by Celeste Headlee

8-hour work day, agricultural Revolution, airport security, Atul Gawande, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, correlation does not imply causation, deliberate practice, Downton Abbey, Dunbar number, Elon Musk, estate planning, financial independence, Ford paid five dollars a day, gamification, hedonic treadmill, helicopter parent, Henri Poincaré, hive mind, income inequality, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, knowledge worker, Lyft, new economy, Parkinson's law, performance metric, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, tech worker, TED Talk, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thorstein Veblen, Torches of Freedom, trickle-down economics, uber lyft, women in the workforce, work culture

As the anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar said, “Our minds are not designed to allow us to have more than a limited number of people in our social world. The emotional and psychological investments that a close relationship requires are considerable, and the emotional capital we have available is limited.” His research led to the creation of the “Dunbar number”: the number of relationships that a human being can reasonably maintain. The Dunbar number is 150. By the end of 2018, I had more than 8,000 “friends” on Facebook and more than 16,000 followers on Twitter, all of whom sent me messages and commented on my photos. Many know my dog’s name and my favorite foods and what I do with my time. It’s simply too much.

The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy by Paolo Gerbaudo

Airbnb, barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Californian Ideology, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, centre right, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, digital capitalism, digital divide, digital rights, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Dunbar number, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, Evgeny Morozov, feminist movement, gig economy, industrial robot, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, jimmy wales, Joseph Schumpeter, Mark Zuckerberg, Network effects, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shock, post-industrial society, precariat, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Florida, Richard Stallman, Ruby on Rails, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skype, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, Snapchat, social web, software studies, Stewart Brand, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, the long tail, Thomas L Friedman, universal basic income, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, WikiLeaks

These groups resemble movement assemblies or activist groups, often lacking a dedicated meeting space, with a small degree of formalisation and high fluctuation in participation. Falkvinge advises to create a flexible ‘scaffolding’ with local groups organised geographically in city groups and district groups. It cautions against having any group be larger than the Dunbar number, 150 people, in order to prevent that it becomes too large to cohere. Each local group will have two spokespersons who are then integrated at a higher level in the organisational ‘scaffolding’ with other ‘go-to people’ in the same geography, to allow for coordination.208 Differently from the ‘sections’ of socialist parties, these groups are not conceived as sovereign decision-making centres whose deliberations are then funnelled up to the higher rungs of the party.

…

Index Affordances: 5, 66, 68–9, 101 Agora voting: 119–20, 124–5 Alcibiades: 185 Alliance for Workers’ Liberty: 103 Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE): 65 Anticapitalism: 64 Appendino, Chiara: 10 Arab Spring: 168 Avaaz: 74, 169 Bauman, Zygmunt: 92 Benevolent dictator: 19, 159–60, 185 Berlusconi, Silvio: 33, 35, 150, 154 Bezos, Jeff: 19, 66 Big Data: 4, 46, 50 Big organising: 76 Blair, Tony: 35, 166 Bonaparte, Charles-Louis Napoléon: 110 Bonapartism: 110 Bond, Becky: 14, 157, 172 Bratton, Benjamin: 71–3 Breznev, Leonid: 148 Bureaucracy: 17–8, 31, 35, 40, 148, 179–80, 183, 191 As a problem in political parties: 40–1 Consultants: 18 Conflict between bureaucracy charismatic leadership: 148–9, 151 Elimination of: 75–6, 89, 96–7, 105, 183 Microbureaucracy: 97 Party in central office: 94, 95 Caesarism: 150–2 Callaghan, James: 148 Cambridge Analytica: 50, 56 Carmena, Manuela: 11 Casaleggio Associati: 9, 102, 116, 125, 141–2, 160 Casaleggio, Davide: 15, 61, 81, 89, 167 Casaleggio, Gianroberto: 9, 60–1, 94, 97, 116, 154, 160–1 Casas Moradas: 104 Castells Manuel: 23, 146 Clinton, Hillary: 54, 158 Colau, Ada (mayor of Barcelona): 11 Collaborative policy development: 17, 107, 130–3, 141, 180 Comisión de Garantias (guarantee committee, Podemos): 136 Complutense University of Madrid: 11, 155 Computer Chaos Club (Germany): 124 Connected outsiders: 20, 43–4, 50–1, 55, 177 Income: 53–4 Young vote: 52 Education: 53 Representatives’ sociodemographics: 54 Conservative Party (UK): 31 Considerant, Victor: 126 Consul (decision-making software): 108, 115, 120–2 Corbyn, Jeremy: 12, 151 Dalton, Richard: 35 Decidim: 108, 124 Deliveroo: 13, 49, 50 De Tocqueville, Alexis: 27 Dean, Howard: 13 Dean, Jodi: 26 Decision-making platforms: 105–15 Della Volpe, Galvano: 28 Democracy Deliberative democracy: 38, 60, 91, 108, 109–11, 114, 123–4, 127 Direct democracy: 61, 142, 180 Democracy quality: 40, 128, 186 Demands for “real democracy”: 59 Democratic centralism: 41 Conditions for: 129 Criticism of existing: 58–9 Criticism of: 110 Intraparty: 13 OMOV (one man, one vote system): 102 Participatory budgeting: 60 Participatory democracy: 3, 17 DemocracyOS: 108 Democrazia Proletaria (Proletarian Democracy): 26 Di Battista, Alessandro: 83, 100, 135, 157 Di Maio, Luigi: 1–3, 135, 157, 181 Digital democracy: External validation: 125 Discussion of direct legislation: 110 Management of online decision-making: 127–30, 191 Online democracy: 60 Need for guarantee rules: 143 Participatory legislation: 17 Reactive democracy: 18, 127, 163, 185–6 Thresholds: 121, 124 Digital capitalism: 46–7, 93 Digital disruption: 18 Economic rise: 47, 49 Gig economy: 50 Digital parties (also platform parties): 3–5, 14, 18–9 As cloud parties: 79 As forum parties: 79 As start-up parties: 80 Conflicts between national leadership and local groups: 102 Data gathering: 69, 73–4 Platform as policy platform: 77, 189 Free labour: 18, 69, 75, 178, 191 Free membership: 17, 69 Free registration: 74 History: 7–10 Low marginal costs of communication: 5, 48 Low staff numbers: 49 Similarities with platform companies: 5 Similarities with television party: 78 Digital platforms: 69 Architecture: 115–6 Definitions: 69 Hierarchies: 73 Reintermediation: 71 Standardisation: 71 Supposed neutrality: 72 Digital revolution: 44–6, 48 And Fordism: 31 As a cleavage: 45–7 Comparison with industrial revolution: 26, 28, 30–1, 33, 44–7, 49, 51, 54 Digital rights: 55–7 Privacy: 55 Digital surveillance: 55 Reform of copyright: 56 Digital Bill of rights (UK): 58 Marco Civil da Internet (Brazil): 58 Direct Connect (file-sharing hub): 8 Direttorio (M5S Directorate): 135 Discorsi all’umanità: 150, 154 Disintermediation: 66, 70, 71, 75–6, 109 Distributed centralisation: 17, 72, 76, 145, 183 Distributed organising: 14, 75, 182 Dryzek, John S.: 109 Dunbar number: 98 Duverger, Maurice: 31, 39–4, 75, 165 Distinction between direct and indirect party: 41 Theory of party structure: 40 Dyer-Whiteford, Nick: 49 Echenique, Pablo: 136 Economic crisis: 20, 27, 43, 51–3, 145–6 Eggers, David: 94 Emerson, Ralph Waldo: 24 Encadrement: 163, 165, 174 Engström, Christian (Pirate Party MEP): 55 Environmental movements: 25, 32, 146 Erdogan, Tayyip: 110 Errejón, Iñigo: 11, 138, 149, 160–1 Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD): 65, 135 Exley, Zack: 14, 157, 172 FAANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google): 49–50, Facebook: 2–4, 12–3, 43, 47, 49, 56, 66, 68–74, 84, 144, 156, 163, 169 Facebook live: 3 Newsfeed algorithm: 106 Falkvinge, Rick: 8, 56, 156, 159, 173, 181 Feminist movements: 25, 145 Fico, Roberto (president of the Italian lower chamber): 3, 95, 100, 135 Forza Italia (Italy): 33, 35, 52 Foti, Alex: 50 France Insoumise: 4, 12, 74, 81, 83, 86, 87, 91, 93, 96–9, 108, 121–2, 132–3, 139, 144, 158–9, 166–70, Avenir en Commun electoral programme: 122, 132 Groupes d’appui (support groups): 97–9 Friedman, Milton: 64 Friedman, Thomas L.: 23 Galapagar case: 138–9 Game of Thrones: 156 Ghibellines: 28 Gillespie, Tarleton: 69 Gramsci, Antonio: 7, 27, 37–8, 41, 43–4, 75, 77, 105, 143, 164 Theory of party structure: 38–9, 164 On the passivity of the mass: 147 On leadership: 151–2, Great Recession: 4, 27, 46, 168, Green Party: 10, 16, 26, 27 Basisdemokratie (grassroots democracy): 16 Grillo, Beppe: 2–3, 9, 43, 59–60, 74–5, 80, 83, 89, 95, 100–1, 135, 141, 153, 154–5, 158–60, 181 theatre shows: 154 Guelphs: 28 Guevara, Che: 25, 26, 148 House of Cards: 25 Hyperleader: 17, 144–62 And reactive democracy: 185 As benevolent dictator: 186 Characteristics: 153–5 Relationship with advisors: 159–60 Reputation: 154 Iglesias Turrion, Pablo: 11, 86, 94, 136, 138–9, 145, 149–50, 151, 153, 155–6, 158–60, 181 Italia a 5 Stelle (Five star movement annual gathering): 1–3 Izquierda Unida (IU): 136 Julius Caesar: 19, 28, 150, 152, 159, 161 Kant, Immanuel: 184 Karpf, David: 13, 169 Katz, Richard: 7, 30, 32, 59, 99 Kautsky, Karl: 110 Kennedy, John Fitzgerald: 33 Kirchheimer, Otto: 7, 32 Klug, Adam: 12, 171 La Tuerka: 150, 156 Labour Party: 12, 14, 29, 31, 35, 41, 52, 54, 107–8, 111, 148, 151, 156, 165, 168, 177 Lansman, Jon: 12, 103, Lavapies (neighbourhood in Madrid): 94 Leadership: 146–8 Charismatic leadership: 148–9 Leaderlessness: 77, 146, 181, 183, 187 Legal-rational: 147 Routinisation of charisma: 188 Liberalism: 28 Linux: 19, 82, 86, 159 Liquid Feedback: 4, 16, 61, 112–4, 121, 124 Loomio: 108, 112, 114–5 Machiavelli, Niccolò: 151, 186 Macron, Emmanuel: 13, 108, 140 Madison, James: 24 Mair, Peter: 7, 30, 32, 59, 99 Marx, Karl: 68, 93 May’s law: 124, 170 Mélenchon, Jean-Luc: 12, 52, 53, 86–8, 93, 107, 122, 132, 144–5, 156–9 Michels, Robert: 7, 16, 27, 30–1, 36–9, 41, 103, 110, 140, 142, 147, 152–3, 175, 179 Iron law of oligarchy: 36–7 Theory of party structure: 39 Microbureaucracy: 97 Mill, John Stuart: 24 Momentum: 26, 73, 80, 83, 87, 96, 102–3, 107, 166, 171–2 Monedero, Juan Carlos: 11 Montero, Irene: 138–9, 158 Morgan, Gareth: 67 MoVimento 5 Stelle (Five Star Movement): 1–5, 7, 9–19, 26, 43, 52–4, 57, 60–4, 66, 73–4, 77, 80–1, 83, 86–90, 93, 95–7, 99, 100–2, 105, 107–8, 112, 115–7, 119–20, 124, Meetup groups: 97, 99–102 Referendums for the expulsion of members: 135 Salary restitution programme: 57 Movimento Sociale Italiano (rightwing party in Italy): 2 NationBuilder (political campaigning app): 12, 107, 121, 124 Nazism: 24 Nielsen, Jakob: 91 Law of participation: 91 Nixon, Richard: 33 Nvotes: 108, 119 Obama, Barack: 11, 13 Olivetti, Adriano: 88–9, 154 Optimates: 28 Organisation: 67 Delegation: 17 Elimination of middlemen: 15, 183 Integration of technology: 13 Iron law of oligarchy: 36–7, 185 Lean management: 15 Organisational fragility: 187 Netroots organisations: 13 Ostrogorski, Moisei: 24, 27, 31, 104, Paine, Thomas: 111 Panebianco, Angelo: 7, 27, 32, 34–5 Parlamentarie (M5S online primaries): 10 Parliament et Citoyens (French parliament digital democracy project): 107 Parsons, Talcott: 45 Participa (Podemos participatory portal): 12, 73, 132 Participation And anti-party suspicion: 85–8 As an idea in contemporary culture: 84 And distrust towards bureaucracy: 150 And lack of party office: 96 Aristocratic tendencies: 164, 173 Difference between militant and sympathiser: 174 Habitueés of meetings: 103 Individualisation of participation: 102–3, 188 In parties’ discourse: 82–4 Lurking supporters: 174 Participationism: 81–9, 191 Participation aristocracy: 91 Participation divide: 91 Participatory representation: 123 Passive membership: 175 Superbase: 17, 152, 162–72 Partido de la Red (Party of the Net, Argentina): 8 Partido Popular (Popular Party): 11 Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE): 11, 14, 108, 166, 190 Partido X (X Party, also known as the Party of the Future, Spain): 8 Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party): 31, 35, 42, 92, 93, 95 Partito Democratico (Democratic Party, Italy): 10, 35, 52–3, 111 Partito Socialista Italiano (Italian Socialist Party, PSI): 153 Pericles: 185 Pirate Bay (file sharing server): 8, 56, 58, 166 Pirate Parties: 4, 7–9, 12–3, 16, 26, 48, 50, 52, 54–8, 61–2, 64, 66, 73, 77, 82, 86, 88, 93, 99, 105, 107, 112, 115, 159, 166, 172, 174, 177, 178, 180–1 Piratar (Iceland): 8 Pirate Party International (PPI): 8 Piratenpartei (Germany): 8, 114 Piratpartiet (Sweden): 8, 55, 166, 167 Česká pirátská strana (Czech Pirate Party): 8 Place Fear of, terror loci: 93, 95 Organisational principle of: 42 Platformisation: 14, 67, 69, 73, 76–7, 179, 183–4, 187, Podemos: 4, 7, 9, 11–4, 16, 19, 26, 52–5, 57, 61–3, 65–6, 69, 73, 81, 86–8, 93–8, 104–5, 107–8, 112, 115, 119–21, 123–5, 131–2, 136–43, 149–51, 153, 155–60, 166–70, 173–4, 177, 180–1, 193 Circles (Podemos’ local groups): 97–8, 115, 132 Citizens’ Council (Podemos’ central committee): 11, 96, 131, 136 Iniciativas Ciudadanas and Popular Podemos (Podemos Citizens’ and Popular initiatives): 121, 131 Plaza Podemos: 16, 86, 120, 131 Political Parties: Astroturf parties: 26 Definitions of: 27–9 Cadres: 18, 161, 179, 183 Catchall: 33 Integration: 182 Electoral/professional parties: 33 Party systems: 26 Political careers: 99 Mass parties: 30–2 Movement parties: 25 New Left: 27 Party sections, cells: 97–8 Passivity of the mass: 186 Patronage parties: 28 Return of: 25–8 Suspicion towards: 22–4 Television parties: 33–6 Populares (Party in ancient Rome): 28 Populism: 1, 4, 9, 10, 12, 15, 27, 39, 44 Poulantzas, Nicos: 27 Power struggles: 161, Precariat: 50 Proceduralism: 188, 189, Protest movements: 1968: 26 2011: 36 Environmentalist: 25, 146 Feminist: 25, 146 Raggi, Virginia: 10 Rajoy, Mariano: 138 Reduction of membership of traditional parties: 165 Rees, Emma: 12, 103 Renewable energy: 62–3 Republican Party: 28 Republique En Marche (REM, Macron’s movement): 108 Revelli, Marco: 31–2 Rittinghausen, Moritz Robespierre Rokkan, Stein: 45 Role as diffusors of messages: 176 Rousseau (5 Star Movement decision-making system): 2, 10–11, 116–7 Lex functions: 117, 131 Lex Iscritti: 117 Hacker attacks: 119 Villaggio Rousseau: 2 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: 37 Salvini, Matteo: 1, 13 Sanchez, Pedro: 11 Sanders, Bernard (US senator and presidential primary candidate in 2016): 13 Scarrow, Susan: 28, 128–9 Schneider, James: 12 Schumpeter, Joseph: 38 Scudo della Rete (Shield of the Net): 57 Security Silicon Valley: 15 Signup process: 168–9 Skocpol, Theda: 42 Snowden, Edward: 50 Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD): 14 Srnicek, Nick: 71 Stalinism: 24 Stallman, Richard (open source activist): 116, 124 Super-volunteer: 171–3 Teatro Smeraldo, Milan: 9 Telegram: 4 The Apprentice: 156 TOR (The onion router): 56 Tormey, Simon: 60 Torvalds, Linus: 159 Transparency: 57 Trump, Donald: 6, 35 Tufekci, Zeynep: 187 Twitter: 4, 124 UK Independence Party (UKIP): 65 Universal basic income: 63, 131 Universal basic services: 64 V for Vendetta (film): 3 Vaffanculo Day (literally ‘Fuck Off Day’, M5S protest in 2007): 9 Veltroni, Walter: 93 Von Hayek, Friedrich: 25 Von Treitsche, Heinrich: 24 Wales, Jimmy: 159 Washington, George Weber, Max: 7, 27–9., 31, 37–8, 40, 147, 151, 185 Weil, Simone (Christian anarchist); WhatsApp: 4 Whigs (Liberal party, UK): 22 Wikipartido (Wikiparty, Mexico): 8 Wikipedia: 19, 82, 86, 91, 159 World Social Forum: 25 Yang, Guobin: 44 Your Priorities: 108 Zeming, Jang: 148 Zuckerberg, Mark: 63, 66, 158

What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Anne Wojcicki, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, bike sharing, business process, call centre, carbon tax, cashless society, citizen journalism, clean water, commoditize, connected car, content marketing, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, different worldview, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, don't be evil, Dunbar number, fake news, fear of failure, Firefox, future of journalism, G4S, Golden age of television, Google Earth, Googley, Howard Rheingold, informal economy, inventory management, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, moral hazard, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, old-boy network, PageRank, peer-to-peer lending, post scarcity, prediction markets, pre–internet, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, search inside the book, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, social graph, social software, social web, spectrum auction, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, the long tail, the medium is the message, The Nature of the Firm, the payments system, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, web of trust, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, Zipcar

More threads will tie more of us together longer than in any time since the bygone days when we lived all our lives in small towns. Today, our circles of friends grow only larger. Does this abundance of friendship make each relationship shallower? I don’t think so. Friendship finds its natural water level—we know our capacity for relationships and stick closest to those we like best. The so-called Dunbar number says we are wired to pay attention to about 150 relationships. I think that could grow with relationships of various kinds that are easier to maintain online. But remember the key insight that made Facebook such a success: It brought real names and real relationships to the internet. It’s about good friends.

…

., 111 Daylife, 35, 39, 50, 126 Day, Peter, 113–14 Dean, Howard, 51 Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, 239 Dell, 12–19, 46, 50 Dell’Abate, Gary, 131 Dell, Michael, 14–15, 17–18, 98, 113 democracy, 238 Denton, Nick, 55, 92 Denuo, 145–46 design automobiles and, 172–73 collaboration and, 98–99 open, 173 simplicity and, 116 dhanaX.com, 196 Digg, 4, 86, 126, 128, 132 Diggnation, 132–34 digital equity, 71 digital publishing, 138–39 DIO. See Do It Ourselves Direct2Dell, 17 directory assistance, 78 distributed thinking, 36–39, 126–27 distribution, 123, 134 doctors, 203 Doerr, John, 165 Do It Ourselves (DIO), 207 domain registration, 170 DonorsChoose.org, 196–97 DoubleClick, 5 Dubner, Stephen J., 75 Dunbar number, 232 eBay, 160 JetBlue and, 184 Skype and, 31 Wal-Mart v., 54–55 Edelman, Richard, 223 education, 104, 210–17 Edwards, D’Wayne, 112 Elberse, Anita, 63 Electronic Frontier Foundation, 239 energy, 162–65 entertainment, 130–36 Entertainment Weekly, 112–13 environment, 126, 162–63 Epicurious.com, 154, 179 Epstein, Daniel A., 148 e-readers, 139–40 Estrada, Joseph, 106 ethics of privacy, 232–33 of publicness, 45 of transparency, 97 Etsy, 31, 160 European Union, 35 Everyblock, 34 Everything’s Miscellaneous (Weinberger), 82, 137 evil, 99–102 Evslin, Tom, 30–31 exhibitionism, 234 The Experimental Witch (Coelho), 142–43 experimentation, 217 eyeballs, clicks v., 66 Facebook, 4, 20–21, 48, 126 automobile industry and, 173–74 Causes application, 196–97 Google and, 101 government and, 220–21 mistakes and, 94–95 as platform, 34–35 politics and, 51 trust and, 85–86 Fake, Caterina, 45, 89 FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), 220 fashion, 103–4, 180 Fast Company, 15 Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 131, 166, 219 Federated, 55 financial meltdown of 2008, 69 First Amendment, 237 Flickr, 21, 45 communities and, 50 customer input and, 89–90 Flixwagon.com, 105 FoodBlogBlog, 155 forgiveness, 232 fragmentation, 63, 65 fraud, 205–6 Freakonomics (Levitt & Dubner), 75 free book publishing and, 141 as business model, 76–80 Freedom of Information Act, 218 Fresh Direct, 179 Friedman, Jane, 141–42 Friedman, Thomas, 165 friendships, 231–32 G4, 132 Galant, Debra, 127 Garfield, Bob, 150–51, 167–68 Gawker Media, 55, 92 Generation Google, 7, 231 GetSatisfaction.com, 47 gift economy, 59–63 Glam, 29–30 Gmail, 6, 78–79, 168–69 Godin, Seth, 57, 204–5 Gonzo Marketing (Locke), 149–50 Google ambitions of, 121 antitrust inquiry of, 100 customer service and, 170 economy, 68–69 embedding, 6 Facebook and, 101 fooling, 43 growth of, 69 home page, 115 Justice Department investigation of, 6 links and, 27 media revenue plan, 143–44 platforms of, 33 success of, 5–6 Google Analytics, 33 Google Apps, 168 Google Calendar, 33, 168 Google Checkout, 198 Google Docs, 33, 168 Google Groups, 33 Google Health, 200–201 Googlejuice, 42–45 New York Times and, 78 Vaynerchuk and, 158 Google Maps, 33–34, 168 embedding, 6 real estate and, 188 Google News, 39, 94, 126 Google.org, 162–65 Gore, Al, 163, 217 government, 217–21 Gross, Bill, 175, 193–94 growth, 31–32 Haass, Richard, 237 hacking, 201–2 Haque, Umair, 64, 74, 101–2, 237 Hatt, Bertil, 204 health care, 199–203, 208 Heiferman, Scott, 206–7 Here Comes Everybody (Shirky), 50, 60, 151, 237 Heyward, Andrew, 37 Holovaty, Adrian, 34 Holtzbrinck, 193 home pages, 115 honesty, 95–97 Hot, Flat, and Crowded (Friedman, T.), 165 Hourihan, Meg, 25 Huack, Peter, 37 Huffington, Ariana, 124 Hughes, Chris, 51 Hulu, 135 Hunter, Dick, 18–19 Icerocket, 15, 20 ICQ, 31–32 Idealab, 175, 193 Ideas platform, 62 IdeaStorm, 17 identity, 233–34 business, 80–81 Ikea, 140 incubators, 193 Indeed.com, 39 inefficiency, 74, 128–29 InnoCentive, 113–14 innovation, 111–14 cash flow v., 110 newspapers and, 129–30 Institute for the Future of the Book, 138 insurance, 203–9 interestingness, 89–90 iPhone, 51 “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

SUPERHUBS: How the Financial Elite and Their Networks Rule Our World by Sandra Navidi

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, assortative mating, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Black Swan, Blythe Masters, Bretton Woods, butterfly effect, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, conceptual framework, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, digital divide, diversification, Dunbar number, East Village, eat what you kill, Elon Musk, eurozone crisis, fake it until you make it, family office, financial engineering, financial repression, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google bus, Gordon Gekko, haute cuisine, high net worth, hindsight bias, income inequality, index fund, intangible asset, Jaron Lanier, Jim Simons, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, McMansion, mittelstand, Money creation, money market fund, Myron Scholes, NetJets, Network effects, no-fly zone, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, Parag Khanna, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer, performance metric, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, power law, public intellectual, quantitative easing, Renaissance Technologies, rent-seeking, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, rolodex, Satyajit Das, search costs, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, systems thinking, tech billionaire, The Future of Employment, The Predators' Ball, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, too big to fail, Tyler Cowen, women in the workforce, young professional

Rob Cross, “The Most Valuable People in Your Network,” Harvard Business Review BlogNetwork, March 8, 2011, https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-most-valuable-people-in-yo. 21. Robin Dunbar, How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Dunbar’s Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks (Boston: Cambridge University Press, 2010), Kindle locations 40-42, Kindle edition; Drake Bennett, “The Dunbar Number: From the Guru of Social Networks,” Businessweek, January 10, 2013, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-10/the-dunbar-number-from-the-guru-of-social-networks. 22. Valdis Krebs, “Power in Networks,” Orgnet.com, 2004, http://www.orgnet.com/PowerInNetworks.pdf. 23. John Field, Social Capital (London: Taylor and Francis, 2008), Kindle locations 1552-53, Kindle edition. 24.

Grouped: How Small Groups of Friends Are the Key to Influence on the Social Web by Paul Adams

Airbnb, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, content marketing, David Brooks, Dunbar number, information retrieval, invention of the telegraph, Jeff Hawkins, mirror neurons, planetary scale, race to the bottom, Richard Thaler, sentiment analysis, social web, statistical model, the strength of weak ties, The Wisdom of Crowds, web application, white flight

For an in depth discussion on the structure of our social network and how it’s shaped by evolution, see the 2010 book How Many Friends Does One Person Need? by Robin Dunbar. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler have also studied this in modern groups. See the 2010 Harvard Magazine article “Networks, neolithic to now” for an overview. 5. For a great overview (with data) of Dunbar’s number and online games, see Christopher Allen’s post “The Dunbar number as a limit to group sizes” on his blog Life With Alacrity. 6. For lots of detail about group dynamics, see David Brook’s book The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (Random House, 2011). 7. For more information on Stanley Milgram’s experiments, including challenges to his methods, see the Wikipedia article on Small world experiment. 8.

Facebook: The Inside Story by Steven Levy

active measures, Airbnb, Airbus A320, Amazon Mechanical Turk, AOL-Time Warner, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Blitzscaling, blockchain, Burning Man, business intelligence, Cambridge Analytica, cloud computing, company town, computer vision, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dunbar number, East Village, Edward Snowden, El Camino Real, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Firefox, Frank Gehry, Geoffrey Hinton, glass ceiling, GPS: selective availability, growth hacking, imposter syndrome, indoor plumbing, information security, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, lock screen, Lyft, machine translation, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, MITM: man-in-the-middle, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Network effects, Oculus Rift, operational security, PageRank, Paul Buchheit, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, post-work, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Robert Mercer, Robert Metcalfe, rolodex, Russian election interference, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skeuomorphism, slashdot, Snapchat, social contagion, social graph, social software, South of Market, San Francisco, Startup school, Steve Ballmer, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, techlash, Tim Cook: Apple, Tragedy of the Commons, web application, WeWork, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, Y2K, you are the product

Reporting that the feature “accounts for a significant chunk of all friending on Facebook,” Backstrom went through the technical process of how Facebook chooses its suggestions. The most important hunting ground is the “friends of friends” region, according to the presentation. But that is a very large set. Users have an average of 130 friends, he said, each of whom has their own 130 friends. (This is close to the so-called Dunbar number, named after the sociologist Robin Dunbar, who discovered that most people can reasonably maintain relationships with no more than 150 people.) So the typical user has 40,000 friends of friends (FoFs), and a power user with thousands of friends might have 800,000 FoFs. That’s where the other data comes in—to find signals like the number or closeness of mutual friends and mutual interests, along with “cheaply available data” to identify which ones are likely to cause someone to click when spotted in a PYMK list.

…

“We do not create”: “House Energy and Commerce Questions for the Record,” June 29, 2018. This is Facebook’s response to follow-up questions from Zuckerberg’s 2018 testimony before the committee. Backstrom: His PYMK talk was given at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics on July 7, 2010. The slide deck is currently viewable on graphanalysis.org. Dunbar number: Robin Dunbar explains his theory in How Many Friends Does One Person Need? (Harvard University Press, 2010). “It did not set up”: Lisa Katayama, “Facebook Japan Takes the Model-T Approach,” Japan Times, June 25, 2008. Facebook Japan: Statistics are cited from the global analytics company Statcounter.

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s attempt to acquire FB, 137 and Zuckerberg’s staff meetings, 109–10 See also specific names encryption, 438, 488, 500–501, 505, 513, 514 Everson, Carolyn, 201 Facebook, 502–3 board of directors of, 102, 133, 288, 470 and buyout offers, 131–37 co-founders of, 68–70, 96 conceptual predecessor of, 34–35 critics (see critics/criticisms of Facebook) culture (see culture of Facebook) data (see data gathering of Facebook; user data ) design and interface of, 62–63, 91, 113 domains for, 60, 104 early leadership of, 97 employees (see employees of Facebook) features, 110–11 (see also specific features, including News Feed of FB) founder (see Zuckerberg, Mark) friends (see friends and “friending”) growth (see Growth Circle; growth of Facebook) initial programming effort for, 60–61 launch of, at Harvard, 65, 67–68 mission (see mission of Facebook) mobile (see mobile Facebook ) name change from “Thefacebook,” 104 objectionable content (see content arbitration on Facebook) offices (see work spaces of Facebook) origins of, 6, 53 Platform (see Platform of Facebook) positive impact of, 12, 16, 240, 371, 434 privacy practices of (see privacy) redesigns of, 113, 138–39, 259–63, 525 reputation of, 11–12, 398, 484–85, 525 scandals (see specific scandals, including Cambridge Analytica and Russian interference in US presidential election) security (see security measures of Facebook) server space required for, 66, 67, 97–98, 100, 105, 115 Terms of Service agreements, 265, 369, 407, 414 users (see users) values of, 111, 239–41, 289, 459 Facebook Artificial Intelligence Lab (FAIR), 453–54 Facebook Basics, 8 Facebook Connect, 169–71, 173, 268, 297, 408–9 “Facebook Effect,” 9 Facebook Effect, The (Kirkpatrick), 184 Facebook Guy, 62, 113 Facebook Home devices, 287, 297 Facebook Live, 343, 432, 439–41, 443–44, 468, 471 facebook program of Tillery, 34–35, 60 Facebook Research app, 483 facebooks of schools, 34–35, 48, 53, 59–60, 67, 76 Facebook Supreme Court, 460–61 Facebook Watch, 510 Facemash incident, 47–52, 53, 56, 58, 61, 64, 144 Faceweb, 281, 282, 283 fake accounts/users, 376–77, 455 fake news and misinformation algorithms’ amplification of, 9, 11, 361 and anti-Hillary ads, 358–59 and artificial intelligence, 455 data-based perspectives on, 349–50 and digital literacy, 436 and “disputed content” labels, 389 downranking of, 389 fake outlets of, 358 FB’s policies on, 438–39, 519 and FB’s reluctance to arbitrate truth, 337, 346, 357, 361 FB’s response to concerns about, 345–46, 348–49, 357–58, 359, 389 FB’s work to mitigate, 362–63, 370, 463, 484 and freedom of speech/expression, 363, 389 originating in Macedonia, 358–59, 364, 365 people profiteering on, 358–59, 365 and Philippines’ 2016 presidential election, 347–48 post-election reactions to, 361–62 and privacy in Next Facebook, 514 and Project P team, 365–66 spikes in, before election, 9, 358 Stamos’s report on, 363–67 state-sponsored, 435, 438, 454 as threat to democracy, 362 Zuckerberg’s “crazy idea” comment on, 10, 360–61, 370 Zuckerberg’s perspectives on, 523 See also Cambridge Analytica Family collection of apps, 511–12, 513–14 Fanning, Shawn, 79–80 Farmville app, 162–63 Farrakhan, Louis, 459 Faust, Drew, 382 Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and antitrust charges, 515, 516 Consent Decree and sanctions of 2011, 11, 272–74, 478–79 and FB’s acquisition of Instagram, 306–7 and $5 billion fine, 11, 479, 525 formal complaints about FB made to, 265 and WhatsApp, 503 “Feed Me: Motivating Contribution in Social Network Sites,” 221, 224 F8 developers conference, 154, 157–58 Feinstein, Dianne, 396 Ferrante, Danny, 217 Fetterman, Dave, 150–51, 155, 169 financials of Facebook and costs of server space, 97–98, 100 and dilemma on funding choices, 100–104 disconnect between reputation and, 484–85 and first profit (2009), 256 and FTC’s $5 billion fine, 479 initial capital for Thefacebook, 67 and initial public offering (IPO), 288–93, 297–98 and investments in security, 476 and Microsoft’s funding, 185 and mission of FB, 524 and Parker’s fundraising, 85–86, 89 and Pincus and Hoffman, 88 and pitch to venture capitalists, 88–90 and private funding rounds, 288 and public company transition, 287–93 and revenues from advertising, 138, 170, 178, 198, 275, 297, 477 and revenues from platform, 153–54, 168 and revenues from user data, 175 and revenues lost to mobile FB, 290 “seed round” funding from Thiel, 88–89, 90, 100, 101, 178 and stakes of co-founders, 96 and stock prices of Facebook, 291, 293, 297, 426, 477 and venture round with Accel, 102–3, 132, 178 and Washington Post’s investment, 100–102 “Find Friend” program, 215 Fishman, Ivan, 318 Flickr, 12, 114 Flixster third-party app, 161, 169–70 ForAmerica, 418 Forstall, Scott, 278 Foursquare, 309–11 Franklin, Rachel, 492 Free Basics program, 234, 347, 437 freedom of speech/expression and content moderation, 246, 248–49, 459–60 and fake news disseminated on FB, 363, 389 as founding ideal of Facebook, 111, 459 and News Feed feature, 142 and presidential election of 2016, 344, 357, 432 and Russian election interference, 376 Sandberg’s emphasis on, 470–71 standards for, 253–54, 340 Zuckerberg’s emphasis on, 111, 249, 254, 344, 357, 363, 459, 524 FriendFeed, purchase of, 203 friends and “friending” average number of, 223, 416 and Dunbar number, 223, 225, 226 in earliest FB release, 63, 65 and “Find Friend” program, 215–16 friends of friends (FoFs), 223, 268–69, 409, 412–13, 415, 416 and “Friends Only” posts, 273 and People You May Know (PYMK), 220–26 user behavior trends in, 216 and user retention, 220–21, 224–25 Friendster, 41–43, 59, 66, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, 102 games on Facebook, 161–63 Gates, Bill, 14, 71, 95, 162, 184, 392, 394 Gehry, Frank, 368 Geminder, Katie, 108, 110, 122, 143 “Gesundheit!

How to Build a Billion Dollar App: Discover the Secrets of the Most Successful Entrepreneurs of Our Time by George Berkowski

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, barriers to entry, Black Swan, business intelligence, call centre, crowdsourcing, deal flow, Dennis Tito, disruptive innovation, Dunbar number, en.wikipedia.org, game design, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, growth hacking, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Jony Ive, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, loose coupling, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, minimum viable product, MITM: man-in-the-middle, move fast and break things, Network effects, Oculus Rift, Paul Graham, QR code, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, software is eating the world, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, subscription business, TechCrunch disrupt, Travis Kalanick, two-pizza team, ubercab, Y Combinator

Irrespective of great leadership being in place, there are other organisational challenges that emerge. There is a magic point around 150 people when an organisation changes. According to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, 150 is the limit to how many stable relationships an average human being can maintain. That number is now indelibly linked with his name – it’s called the Dunbar number. After that point it’s increasingly hard to remember everyone’s name, and an organisation becomes more bureaucratic and political as teams are forced to break up. Problems that were easily solved by yelling a question across the room now require emails to be sent, meetings to be called or adventures down the corridor or up to the next floor.

…

Index Note: page numbers in bold refer to illustrations, page numbers in italics refer to information contained in tables. 99designs.com 111 500 Startups accelerator 136, 160 Accel Partners 3, 158, 261, 304, 321, 336, 383 accelerators 136, 159–60, 160 accountants 164, 316 accounting software 164 acquisition (of users) costs 148–9, 184, 236–7, 275–9, 282 and Facebook 271, 272, 273–4 for five hundred-million-dollar apps 327, 341–3 for hundred-million-dollar apps 252, 259, 266, 267–74, 275–84, 295–307 and incentive-based networks 270–1 international 295–307 for million dollar apps 136–7, 139, 140–51, 148–9, 153 and mobile social media channels 271–3, 272 and mobile user-acquisition channels 269–70 strategy 222–31 for ten-million-dollar apps 211–12, 213, 222–31, 236–7, 248–9 and traditional channels 268–9 and ‘viral’ growth 225, 278, 279–84 zero-user-acquisition cost 278 acquisitions 414–25 buying sustained growth 417–18 by non-tech corporations 418–20 initial public offerings 420–2 Waze 415–16 activation (user) 136, 137, 139, 153–4, 211–12, 213 Acton, Brian 54, 394 addiction, smartphone 30–1 Adler, Micah 269 administrators 409 AdMob 414–15 advertising 43 business model 67, 89–90 costs 140 and Facebook 271, 272, 273–4 mobile 148–9, 268–70, 272–3, 272 mobile social media 272–3, 272 mobile user-acquisition channels 269–70 outdoor 264 shunning of 42, 54–6 video ads 273 aesthetics 131 after product–market fit (APMF) 180 agencies 195–7, 264, 343 ‘agile coaches’ see scrum masters agile software development 192–3, 299, 315, 357, 377 Ahonen, Tomi 45 ‘aiming high’ 40–1 Airbnb 160, 301 alarm features 48 Albion 111 alerts 293 Alexa.com 146 Alibaba 227 ‘ALT tags’ 147 Amazon 7, 29, 131, 164, 227, 276, 366, 374–5, 401, 406 Amazon Web Services 374 American Express 347 Amobee 149 analytics 134–5, 149, 199, 205, 210, 212, 217–21, 294 and cohort analysis 287–8 Flurry 135, 149, 220 function 217–18 Google Analytics 135, 219–20, 345 limitations 284 Localytics 135, 221 and marketing 263 mistakes involving 218–19 Mixpanel.com tool 135, 217–18, 220–1, 287, 290–1, 345 Andreessen, Marc 180, 418–19 Andreessen Horowitz 72, 80, 180, 321, 383, 385, 418–19 Android (mobile operating system) 6, 23–4, 38, 415 advertising 274 audience size 119 beta testing 202 building apps for 116–22 and international apps 296 in Japan 306 scaling development and engineering 357–8 time spent on 26 and WhatsApp 55 Angel Capital Association 162 angel investors 154, 155–6, 323 AngelList 99, 131, 155, 159, 233 Angry Birds (game) 6, 42, 47, 57–8, 87, 89, 97 and application programming interface 36 delivering delight 207 design 131 funding 321 game in game 348–9 international growth 297–9 platform 117, 118 product extension 356 virality 282 annual offsites 379 annual revenue per user (ARPU) 215, 219, 232, 236 anonymity 43, 56–7 anti-poaching clauses 247 antidilution rights 245 API see application programming interface app descriptions 143 app development billion-dollar app 8, 389–425 CEO advice 406–13 getting acquired 414–25 people 395–405 process 390–1 five-hundred-million-dollar app 325–87 funding 328, 383–7 hiring staff 334–6, 337–40 killer product expansion 350–63 process 326–8 scaling 326, 330–6, 331–2 scaling marketing 341–9 scaling people 364–72, 377–9 scaling process 373–82 scaling product development 357–63 hundred-million-dollar app 251–324 international growth 295–307 process 252–4 product-market fit 255–6 retention of users 286–94 revenue engines 257–66, 275–85 user acquisition 267–74 million-dollar app 81–171 app Version 0.1 123–35 coding 133–4 design 129–33 feedback 127, 134–5 funding 152–60, 161–71, 176, 235–49 identity of the business 106–14 lean companies 115–22 metrics 136–9, 139 process 82–4 startup process 85–105 testing 126–8 user acquisition 140–51 ten-million-dollar app 173–249 growth engine 222–31, 235–49 metrics 211–21 new and improved Version 1.0 198–210 process 174–6 product–market fit 180–97 revenue engine 232–4 venture capital 235–49 app stores 22, 27–8, 33–4 see also Apple App Store; Google Play app-store optimisation (ASO) 142, 225 AppAnnie 205 Apple 19, 20, 31–2, 393 application programming interface 35–6 designers 129 Facetime app 46 iWatch 38–9 profit per employee 402–3 revenue per employee 401 visual voicemail 50 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 313 see also iPad; iPhone Apple App Store 22, 27, 32–3, 75, 88, 89, 117, 226 finding apps in 140, 141, 142–5 international apps 297–9 making submissions to 152–3 and profit per employee 403 ratings plus comments 204–5 Apple Enterprise Distribution 201–2 application programming interface (API) 35–6, 185, 360, 374 ARPU see annual revenue per user articles of incorporation 169 ASO see app-store optimisation Atari 20 Atomico 3, 261, 321, 383 attribution 227–31 for referrals 230–1 average transaction value (ATV) 214–15, 219, 232, 236, 387 Avis 95 backlinking to yourself 146 ‘bad leavers’ 247 Balsamiq.com 128 Banana Republic 352 bank accounts 164 banking 156–7 Bardin, Noam 43 Barr, Tom 338 Barra, Hugo 120, 306 Baseline Ventures 72 Baudu 226 beauty 131 BeeJiveIM 33 before product–market fit (BPMF) 180 ‘below the fold’ 143 Beluga Linguistics 297 Benchmark 75 benefits 398–400 beta testing 201–4 Betfair 358 Bezos, Jeff 366, 374 Bible apps 45 billion 9–10 Billion-Dollar Club 5 billionaires 9 Bing 226 ‘black-swan’ events 54 BlackBerry 23 Blank, Steve 257 Blogger 41 blood sugar monitoring devices 38 board seats 242, 243–4 board-member election consent 169 Bolt Peters 363 Booking.com 320 Bootstrap 145 Botha, Roelof 76, 77, 80 Box 7, 90, 276, 396–7, 411 brains 10 brainstorming 108 branding 111–13, 143, 263–4 Braun 129 Bregman, Jay xiii, 14–16, 95, 124, 209, 303 bridge loans 323 Brin, Sergey 366 Bring Your Own Infrastructure (BYOI) 17–18 Brougher, Francoise 340 Brown, Donald 44 Brown, Reggie 104–5 Bubble Witch 421 Buffet, Warren 4 build-measure-learn cycle 116 Burbn.com 72–4, 80 business advisors/coaches 103 business analysts 343 business culture 395–8 business goal setting 310–11 business models 67, 83, 87, 88–91, 175, 253, 259, 327, 351–2, 391, 400, 423–4 business success, engines of 183–4, 423–4 Business Wire 150 CAC see Customer Acquisition Cost Cagan, Marty 314 calendars 49 calorie measurement sensors 38 Cambridge Computer Scientists 160 camera feature 48 Camera+ app 48 Candy Crush Saga 6, 47, 87, 89, 131, 278–81, 318, 349, 421–2 card-readers 41–2 cash flow 164 CEOs see Chief Executive Officers CFOs see Chief Financial Officers channels incentive-based networks 270–1 mobile social-media 271–3, 272 mobile user-acquisition 269–70 source attribution 227–31 testing 224–7 traditional 268–9 viral 280–2 charging phones 49–50 Chartboost 149 chauffer hire see Uber app check-ins, location-based 72, 74 Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) 309, 380 advice from 406–13 and the long haul 68 and product centricity 185–6 role 337 Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) 316 Chief Operations Officers (COOs) 309, 326, 337–40, 380 Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) 186–7, 195 Chillingo 298 China 24–5, 146, 226, 306–7 Cisco 402 Clash of Clans (game) 6, 28, 36, 47, 87, 89, 97, 118, 227, 348–9, 398 Clements, Dave 120 Climate Corporation 412, 419 clock features 47 cloud-based software 67, 90 Clover 419 coding 133–4 cofounders 85, 91–105, 188, 191 chemistry 92–3 complementary skills 93 finding 96–9 level of control 94 passion 93–4 red flags 102–3 successful matches 104–5 testing out 100–2 cohort analysis 237, 287–8 Color.com (social photo-sharing) app 113, 255 colour schemes 111 Commodore 20 communication open 412–13 team 194 with users 208–9 Companiesmadesimple.com 163–4 computers 20–1, 29 conferences 97–8, 202, 312–13 confidentiality provisions 244 connectedness 30 ConnectU 105 consumer audience apps 233–4 content, fresh 147 contracts 165–6 convertible loans 163 Cook, Daren 112 cookies 228–9 Coors 348 COOs see Chief Operations Officers Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) 148–9 Cost Per Download (CPD) 148 Costolo, Dick 77–8, 79–80 costs, and user acquisition 148–9, 184, 236–7, 275–9, 282 Crash Bandicoot 33 crawlers 146–7 Cray-1 supercomputer 20 CRM see customer-relationship management CrunchBase 238 CTOs see Chief Technology Officers Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) 148–9, 184, 236–7, 275–9 customer lifecycle 212–14 customer segments 346–7 customer-centric approach 344 customer-relationship management (CRM) 290–4, 343 customer-support 208–9 Cutright, Alyssa 369 daily active users (DAUs) 142 D’Angelo, Adam 75–6 data 284–5, 345–7 data engineers 284 dating, online 14, 87–8, 101–2, 263 decision making 379–82, 407–8 defining apps 31–4 delegation 407 delight, delivery 205–7 design 82, 129–33, 206–7 responsive 144 designers 132, 189–91, 363, 376 developer meetups 97 developers see engineers/developers development see app development; software development development agencies 196 ‘development sprint’ 192 Devine, Rory 358–9 Digital Sky Technologies 385 directors of finance 316–17 Distimo 205 DLD 97 Doerr, John 164, 310 Doll, Evan 42–3, 105 domain names 109–10 international 146 protection 145–6 Domainnamesoup.com 109 Dorsey, Jack 41, 58, 72, 75–7, 79–80, 104, 112, 215–16, 305, 312, 412–13 ‘double-trigger’ vesting 247 DoubleClick 414 Dow Jones VentureSource 64 down rounds 322–3 downloads, driving 150–1 drag along rights 245 Dribbble.com 132 Dropbox 7, 90, 131, 276 CEO 407, 410–11 funding 160 scaling 336 staff 399 Dunbar, Robin 364–5 Dunbar number 365 e-commerce/marketplace 28–9, 67, 89, 213–14 Chinese 306 Flipboard and 351–2 and revenue engines 232, 233–4, 276 social media generated 271–2 and user retention 288, 289 eBay 7, 28–9, 131, 180, 276 economic models 275 economies of scale 331–2, 331–2 eCourier 15, 95 education 68–9 edX 69 Ek, Daniel 357 Ellis, Sean 182 emails 291–3 emotion effects of smartphones on 29–30, 30 inspiring 223–4 employees see staff employment contracts 246–7 engagement 236, 278, 283 engineering VPs 337, 358–9 engineers/developers 190–1, 194–5, 361–2, 362, 370, 375–7, 405 enterprise 90, 233–4 Entrepreneur First programme 160 entrepreneurs 3–5, 7–8, 65, 262, 393–4, 409, 424 Ericsson 21 Etsy 107, 109, 110, 358 Euclid Analytics 149 Evernote 7, 90, 131, 399 ExactTarget 291 excitement 30 executive assistants 367 Exitround 419 experience 67–8, 264, 397 Fab.com 352 Facebook 7, 10, 26, 32, 48, 76, 226, 394, 422 and acquisition of users 271, 272, 273–4 acquisitions 416–18, 417 agile culture 375 alerts 293 and application programming interface 36 board 180 and business identity 114 and Candy Crush 280–1 Chief Executive Officer 406 cofounders 100–1 and Color 255–6 design 131, 206, 363 Developer Garage 97 driving downloads on 151 and e-commerce decisions 271, 272 and FreeMyApps.com 271 funding 419 and getting your app found 147 and the ‘hacker way’ 375 initial public offering 420–1 and Instagram 29, 51, 76–80, 90, 117 name 110 ‘No-Meeting Wednesday’ 376 product development 187 profit per employee 403 revenue per employee 401 scaling 336 and Snapchat 57 staff 339, 362, 363, 398, 401, 403 and virality 281 WhatsApp purchase 42, 54–6, 416–17, 417 zero-user-acquisition cost 278 and Zynga 279, 281 Facetime app 46 fanatical users 294 feedback 86, 127, 134–5, 182, 192–3, 198–201, 256, 396 loops 204, 211 qualitative 199 quantitative 199 see also analytics Feld, Brad 170, 241 Fenwick and West 168 Fiksu 264, 269–70 finance, VP of 317–18 finding apps 140–8, 148–9 FireEye 90 First Data 419 first impressions 107–10 Fitbit 38 fitness bracelets 38 flat rounds 322–3 Flipboard 6, 29, 42–3, 49, 51, 89–90 and application programming interface 36 Catalogs 351–2 cofounders 105 design 131, 207 funding 164 growth 351–2 platform choice 119 product innovation 351–2 user notifications 292 virality 281 zero-user-acquisition cost 278 Flurry 135, 149, 220 Fontana, Ash 233 Forbes magazine 40 Ford Motors 419 Founder Institute, The 168 founder vesting 166–7, 244 Foursquare 419 France Telecom 13 franchising 354 FreeMyApps.com 270–1 Friedberg, David 412 Froyo (Android mobile software) 7 Fujii, Kiyotaka 304 full service agencies 195–6 functionality 25–6, 45–50, 131 funding 72, 75–6, 84, 87–8, 152–60, 161–71, 179 accelerators 159–60 angel investors 154, 155–6, 323 for billion-dollar apps 391 convertible loans 163 core documents 169–70 for five-hundred-million-dollar apps 328, 383–7 founder vesting 166–7 for hundred-million-dollar apps 254, 258, 316–17, 318–24 incubators 159–60 legal aspects 163–4 and revenue engines 233–4 Series A 234, 238–40, 238, 240, 241, 242–6, 255, 319–21, 385 Series B 238, 241, 253, 260, 284, 319–21, 322, 384 Series C 384 signing a deal 167–8 for ten-million-dollar apps 152–60, 161–71, 176, 235–49 venture capital 72, 75, 156–8, 165–6, 235–49, 261–2, 383–5, 385, 418–19 game in game 348–9 gaming 42, 47, 318, 355 business model 67, 89 and revenue engines 232, 278–9 and user retention 288, 289 see also specific games Gandhi, Sameer 336 Gartner 271 Gates, Bill 4 general managers (GMs) 300–3 Gladwell, Malcolm 424 Glassdoor 361–2 Global Positioning System (GPS) 23 Gmail 72 GMs see general managers goal setting 40–1, 310–11 Goldberg, Dave 397 Goldman Sachs 385 ‘good leavers’ 247 Google 7, 19, 23, 27, 72, 88, 164, 226 acquisitions 43, 414–16, 418 application programming interface 35–6 beta testing 202 Chief Executive Officer 406–8 developer meetups 97 finding your app on 144, 147 Hangouts app 46 meetings 381–2 mission 404, 408–9 and the OKR framework 310 profit per employee 403, 405 revenue per employee 401, 405 scaling 332 and Snapchat 57 and source attribution 228–9 staff 339, 340, 361–2, 366, 401, 403, 404–5, 412 Thank God It’s Friday (TGIF) meetings 311–12 transparency 413 value 78 Waze app purchase 43 and WhatsApp 56 zero-user-acquisition cost 278 see also Android (mobile operating system) Google Ad Mob 149 Google AdSense 149 Google Analytics 135, 219–20, 345 Google Glass 38–9, 405 Google I/O conference 313 Google Maps 33, 35, 414, 416 Google Now 37 Google Play 88, 89, 117, 120, 226 and beta testing 202 finding apps in 141–5 profit per employee 403 ratings plus comments 204–5 Google Reader 72 Google Ventures 384 Google X 405 Google+ and business identity 114 and virality 281 Google.org 339 GPS see Global Positioning System Graham, Paul 184–5, 211 Graphical User Interface (GUI) 20 Greylock 321, 383 Gross, Bill 406–7, 409–10 Groupon 7, 51–2, 227, 344–5, 419 Grove, Andy 310 growth 267, 308–17 buying sustained 417–18 engines 184, 210, 222–31, 259, 265 and five-hundred-million-dollar apps 329–36 and Friday update meetings 311–12 and goal setting 310–11 and hiring staff 308–9, 411–12 and product and development teams 313–14 and staff conferences 312–13 targets 234, 260 see also acquisition (of users); international growth; scaling Growth Hackers 182 GUI see Graphical User Interface hackathons 99 Haig, Patrick 143 Hailo app xiii–xiv, 5, 36, 89, 386 big data 284–5 branding 112–13 cofounders 94–6 customer segments 346–7 customer-support 208–9 design 131, 132, 133, 206–7 development 123–7, 153–4 Friday update meetings 311 funding 162, 242 goal setting 310 growth 296–7, 299, 302–4, 308–11, 313, 315–17, 329–30, 334–6 hiring staff 308–9, 334–6, 338, 366–7 idea for 14–18 international growth 296, 297, 299, 302–4 market research 182 marketing 263, 264, 268, 270, 273, 341, 347–8 meetings 381 metrics 137–9, 216 name 107 organisational culture 396 platform choice 117, 120, 121 premises xiii–xiv, 177–8, 329–30, 371–2, 386 product development 189, 191, 196 retention 293–4 revenue engine 276 scaling development and engineering 357 scaling people 365–7 scaling process 377 team 258 testing 177–8, 201–4 and user emotionality 224 virality 280, 282 Hangouts app 46 Harris Interactive 31 HasOffers 149 Hay Day 47, 97 head of data 342 Heads Up Display (HUD) 38 heart rate measurement devices 37–8 Hed, Niklas 42 hiring staff 308–9, 334–6, 337–40, 365–70 history of apps 31–2 HMS President xiii–xiv, 177–9, 329, 371, 386 HockeyApp 202 HootSuite 151 Houston, Drew 407, 410–11 HP 180, 402 HTC smartphone 121 HUD see Heads Up Display human universals 44–5 Humedica 419 hyperlinks 147 hypertext markup language (HTML) 147 I/O conference 2013 202 IAd mobile advertising platform 149 IBM 20, 402 icons 143 ideas see ‘thinking big’ identity of the business 86 branding 111–13 identity crises 106–14 names 106–11 websites 113–14 image descriptions 147 in Mobi 149 in-app purchases 28 incentive-based networks 270–1 incorporation 163–4, 179 incubators 159–60 Index Ventures 3, 261 initial public offerings (IPOs) 64, 67–9, 78, 80, 246, 420–2 innovation 404–5 Instagram 6, 29, 48, 51, 67, 71–80, 88–90, 114, 117, 226, 278, 340, 417–18 cofounders 73–4 design 131 funding 75–6, 77–8 X-Pro II 75 zero-user-acquisition cost 278 instant messaging 46 Instantdomainsearch.com 109 integrators 410 Intel 310 intellectual property 165–6, 244, 247 international growth 295–307 Angry Birds 297–9 Hailo 296, 297, 299, 302–4 language tools 297 Square 295, 299, 304–6 strings files 296 Uber 299–302 International Space Station 13 Internet bubble 13 investment see funding iOS software (Apple operating system) 7, 23–4, 46, 75, 104 advertising 274 audience size 119 building apps for 116–22 and international apps 296 scaling development and engineering 357–8 time spent on 26 iPad 42–3, 118–20, 351 iPhone 6, 19, 22–3, 32, 38–9, 183, 351 advertising on 274 camera 48 designing apps for 117–18, 120 finding apps with 145 games 42, 47, 58 and Instagram 74–6 in Japan 306 and Square 104, 306 and Uber 301 user spend 117 and WhatsApp app 54–5 iPod 22 IPOs see initial public offerings Isaacson, Walter 32 iTunes app 22, 47, 88, 143 iTunes U app 69 Ive, Jony 129 iZettle 304 Jackson, Eric 40 Jain, Ankit 142 Japan 227, 304–6 Jawbone Up 38 Jelly Bean (Android mobile software) 7 Jobs, Steve 4, 22, 32, 323, 393, 425 journalists 150–1 Jun, Lei 306 Kalanick, Travis 299–300, 384, 422 Kayak 336 Keret, Samuel 43 Keyhole Inc. 414 keywords 143, 146 Kidd, Greg 104 King.com 349, 421–2 see also Candy Crush Saga KISSmetrics 291 KitKat (Android mobile software) 7 Klein Perkins Caulfield Byers (KPCB) 158, 261, 321, 383 Kontagent 135 Koolen, Kees 320, 339 Korea 30 Koum, Jan 42, 54, 55–6, 154, 321, 394, 416 Kreiger, Mike 73–6 language tools 297 Launchrock.com 113–14, 145, 202 Lawee, David 415 lawyers 103, 169, 170, 242 leadership 410–11 see also Chief Executive Officers; managers lean companies 69, 115–22, 154, 257, 320–1 Lee, Bob 340 legalities 163–70, 242–7, 301 letting go 406–7 Levie, Aaron 396–7, 411 Levinson, Art 32 LeWeb 97 Libin, Phil 399 licensing 356 life experience 67–8, 264 lifetime value (LTV) 184, 215, 219, 220–1, 232, 275–7, 279, 291, 342 Line app 46, 226 Lingo24 297 LinkedIn 97, 226, 406, 408–9 links 147 liquidation preference 242, 243, 245 non-participating 245 Livio 419 loans, convertible 163 Localytics 135, 221 locations 69 logos 111–14 LTV see lifetime value luck 412 Luckey, Palmer 39 LVMH 304 Lyons, Carl 263 Maiden 95 makers 375–7 see also designers; engineers/developers managers 189–90, 300–3, 375–7, 405 MapMyFitness 419 market research 115, 127, 182 marketing data 345–7 and Facebook 271, 272, 273–4 and incentive-based networks 270–1 marketing engineering team 344–5 and mobile social media channels 271–3, 272 and mobile user-acquisition channels 269–70 partner marketing 347–8 scaling 341–9 teams 262–6, 337, 342 and traditional channels 268–9 VPs 262–6, 337, 342 marketplace see e-commerce/marketplace MasterCard 347–8 Matrix Partners 283 McClure, Dave 136, 160, 211, 234 McCue, Mike 42–3, 105, 351 McKelvey, Jim 41, 104 ‘me-too’ products 181 Medium 41 Meebo 73 meetings 379–82, 412–13 annual offsite 379 daily check-ins 381 disruptive nature 376–7 Friday update 311–12 meaningful 381–2 monthly strategic 380 quarterly 380 weekly tactical 380 Meetup.com 98–9 Mendelsen, Jason 170 messaging platforms 226 time spent on 46 and user retention 288, 289 metrics 136–9, 139, 211–21 activation 136, 137, 139, 153–4, 211–12, 213 annual revenue per user (ARPU) 215, 219, 232, 236 average transaction value (ATV) 214–15, 219, 232, 236, 387 consensual 215–16 lifetime value (LTV) 184, 215, 219, 220–1, 232, 275–7, 279, 291, 342 and product-market fit 209–10 referral 137, 138, 139, 153, 154, 211–12, 213, 230–1 revenue 137, 138, 139, 154, 211–12, 213, 214–15, 219, 291 transparency regarding 312 see also acquisition (of users); retention (of users) mice 20 Microsoft application programming interface 35–6 revenue per employee 401 Windows 20, 22, 24 Millennial Media 149 minimum viable product (MVP) 123, 153 MirCorp 13–14 mission 261, 404, 408–9 Mitchell, Jason 51 Mitsui Sumitomo Bank 305 Mixpanel.com tool 135, 217–18, 220–1, 287, 290–1, 345 MMS see Multimedia Messaging Service Mobile Almanac 45 Mobile App Tracking 230, 231 mobile technology, rise of 19–39 MoMo app 306 Monsanto 419 moonshots 404–5 Moore, Jonathan 200 MoPub 149 Moqups.com 128 Mosaic 180 Motorola 21 Moz.com 143 Mullins, Jacob 419 Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) 47 Murphy, Bobby 43, 104–5, 152–3 music player apps 47 MVP see Metrics into Action; minimum viable product names 106–11, 142 NameStation.com 108 Nanigans 273–4 National Venture Capital Association 64 native apps 33–4 NDA see Non Disclosure Agreement negotiation 265 Net Promoter Score (NPS) 206, 209 net-adding users 206 Netflix 400 Netscape 164, 180 New Enterprise Associates 385 New York Times news app 32–3, 256 news and alerts feature 48–9 Nextstop 72 Nguyen, Bill 255–6 NHN 227 Nike Fuelband 38 Nintendo Game Boy 47 Nokia 21, 35–6 Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) 165 noncompetition/non-solicitation provision 244, 247 notifications 291–4 NPS see Net Promoter Score Oculus VR 39 OKR (‘objectives and key results’) framework 310–11, 380 OmniGraffle 128 open-source software 23, 34–5, 185 OpenCourseWare 68–9 operating systems 20–4 see also Android; iOS software operations VPs 337 org charts 258, 309 organisational culture 395–8 O’Tierney, Tristan 104 outsourcing 194–7 ownership and founder vesting 166–7 and funding 155, 156, 161–3, 318 oxygen saturation measurement devices 37–8 Paananen, Ilkka 118–19, 397–8 Page, Larry 4, 23, 382, 404, 407–8 Palantir 90 Palihapitiya, Chamath 187 Pandora 7, 47, 67, 131, 410 pay-before-you-download model 28 pay-per-download (PPD) 225 Payleven 304 payment systems 7, 33–4, 227, 304, 305 see also Square app PayPal 7, 227, 304, 305 Pepsi 196 Perka 419 perks 398–400 perseverance 67, 394, 410 personal computers (PCs) 29 perspiration measurement devices 38 Pet Rescue Saga 349, 421 Petrov, Alex 369 phablets 7 Pham, Peter 255 PhoneSaber 33 Photoshop 128 PIN technology 305 Pincus, Mark 311 Pinterest app 48, 226 and business identity 114 and e-commerce decisions 271, 272 and getting your app found 147 name 107 and virality 281 Pishevar, Shervin 300 pivoting 73–4 population, global 9–10 portfolio companies 261–2 PowerPoint 128 PPD see pay-per-download preferential return 243 premises 370–2 preparation 412 press kits 148, 150 press releases 150 Preuss, Dom 98 privacy issues 43, 56–7 private vehicle hire see Uber pro-rata rights 242, 243 producers 409 product chunks 360 product development scaling 357–63 scope 199 team building for 188–91 and team location 193–4 and vision 186–8, 191 see also app development; testing product expansion 350–63 product extension 354 product managers 189–90, 405 product-centricity 185–6, 314, 360 product-market fit 9, 180–97, 235–6, 248, 256–7 measurement 209–10, 212, 286–8 profit 267, 320, 342 profit margin 258–9, 318, 321 profit per employee 402–4, 403, 405 profitability 260, 277, 400 Project Loon 405 proms 12 proto.io tool 133 prototype apps 86, 174 app Version 0.1 123–35, 174 new and improved Version 1.0 198–210 rapid-design prototyping 132–3 PRWeb 150 PSP 47 psychological effects of smartphones 29–30, 30 pttrns.com 131 public-relations agencies 343 publicity 150–1, 225, 313 putting metrics into action 138–9 Puzzles and Dragons 47, 131 QlikView 221, 284–5 QQ 307 quality assurance (QA) 190–1, 196 Quora 76 QZone 307 Rabois, Keith 368, 369 Rakuten 227 Rams, Dieter 129 rapid-design prototyping 132–3 ratings plus comments 204–5 Red Bull 223 redemption codes 230 referrals (user) 137, 138, 139, 153, 154, 211–12, 213 attribution for referrals 230–1 referral codes 230 religious apps 45 remuneration 361–2, 362, 363 Renault 13 restated certification 169 retention (of users) 136–9, 153, 154 for five hundred-million-dollar apps 327, 341–3 for hundred-million-dollar apps 286–94, 288–9 measurement 286–8 for ten-million-dollar apps 206, 211–12, 213, 278 revenue 137–8, 139, 154, 211–12, 213, 214–15, 219, 236, 239–40, 267, 291, 331–2, 341–2, 354 revenue engines 184, 210, 232–4, 257–66, 265, 275–85 revenue per employee 400–2, 402, 405 revenue streams 27–9 Ries, Eric, The Lean Startup 115–16 Rockefeller, John D. 9 Rocket Internet 304 Rolando 33 Rosenberg, Jonathan 413 Rovio 58, 97, 118, 297–9, 318, 320–1, 336, 354, 409 see also Angry Birds Rowghani, Ali 77 Rubin, Andy 23 Runa 419 SaaS see software as a service Sacca, Chris 75–6 sacrifice 86–7 Safari Web browser 32 salaries 361–2, 362, 363 sales VPs 337 Salesforce 291 Samsung 23 Galaxy Gear smartwatch 38 smartphones 121 Sandberg, Sheryl 4, 100–1, 339, 397 SAP 304 scaling 259, 308, 312, 323–4, 326, 330–6, 331–2, 384–5 decision making 379–81 international growth 295–307 marketing 341–9 and organisational culture 396–8 people 338–9, 364–72 premature 334–5 process 373–82 product development and engineering 357–63 and product innovation 350–6 reasons for 333–4 skill set for 335–6 Schmidt, Eric 120 scope 199 screenshots 131, 144, 206 scrum masters (‘agile coaches’) 315, 359, 360 search functions 49 organic 141–2, 141, 145 search-engine optimisation (SEO) 142, 145–8, 225 Sedo.com 109 Seed Fund 136 Seedcamp 160 Sega Game Gear 47 segmentation 220, 287, 290, 346–7 self-empowered squads/units 360 SEO see search-engine optimisation Sequoia Capital 76, 77–80, 158, 255, 321, 383, 385 Series A funding 234, 238–40, 238, 240, 241, 242–6, 255, 261, 262, 319–21, 385 Series B funding 238, 241, 253, 260, 319–21, 322, 384 Series C funding 384 Series Seed documents 168 Sesar, Steven 263 sex, smartphone use during 31 Shabtai, Ehud 43 shares 156, 166–8, 244 ‘sharing big’ 51–2, 52 Shinar, Amir 43 Shopzilla 263 Short Message Service (SMS) 21, 46–7 Silicon Valley 71–4, 77, 79, 99, 162, 168, 180, 184, 255, 340, 361, 411, 422 Sina 227 sitemaps 146–7 skills sets complementary 93 diverse 409–10 for scaling 335–6 Skok, David 283 Skype app 7, 46, 111, 200–1, 226, 357, 419 Sleep Cycle app 48 Smartling 297 smartwatches 7, 38–9 SMS see Short Message Service Snapchat app 6, 43, 46, 56–7, 88, 89, 223, 226, 416, 418 cofounders 104–5 design 131 funding 152–3, 307, 320 name 107 platform 117 staff 340 valuations 333 virality 280, 283 zero-user-acquisition cost 278 social magazines 42–3 see also Flipboard social media 48 driving downloads through 151 and getting your app found 147 mobile channels 271–3, 272 and user retention 288, 289 Sofa 363 SoftBank 227 software development agile 192–3, 299, 315, 357, 377 outsourcing 194–5 see also app development software as a service (SaaS) 67, 90, 208, 214, 233, 276–7 Somerset House 329–30, 371 Sony 21, 47 SoundCloud 358 source attribution 227–31 space tourism 13–14 speech-to-text technology 50 speed 20 Spiegel, Evan 43, 56–7, 104–5, 152–3 Spinvox 50 Splunk 90 Spotify app 47, 357–8 SQL 284 Square app 6, 41–2, 58–9, 87, 89, 333, 350 branding 112 Chief Executive Officer 412–13 cofounders 104 design 131, 363 funding 320–1 international growth 295, 299, 304–6 marketing 348 metrics 215–16 name 107, 110 product–market fit 183 revenue engine 276 scaling people 367–8 scaling product innovation 352–3 staff 340, 367–8 transparency 312 virality 282 Square Cash 353 Square Market 353 Square Register 350, 352–3 Square Wallet 348, 350, 353 Squareup.com 144 staff at billion-dollar app scale 395–405, 423 attracting the best 91 benefits 398–400 conferences 312–13 conflict 334, 378 employee agreements 244 employee legals 246–7 employee option pool 244 employee-feedback systems 378 firing 370, 378 hiring 308–9, 334–6, 411–12 induction programmes 370 investment in 360 mistakes 369–70, 411–12 and premises 370–2 profit per employee 402–4, 403 revenue per employee 400–2, 402 reviews 370 scaling people 364–72, 377–9 scrum masters 315, 359, 360 training programmes 370 see also cofounders; specific job roles; teams Staples 419 Starbucks 338, 348 startup weekends 98 startups, technology difficulties of building 63–80 failure 63–5, 73–4 identity 106–14 lean 115–22, 154 process 82–4, 85–105 secrets of success 66–9 step sensors 38 stock markets 420–1 straplines 111 strings files 296 Stripe 160 style 111 subscriptions 90 success, engines of 183–4, 423–4 SumUp 304 Supercell 28, 47, 97, 118–19, 318, 336, 397–8, 401, 403 see also Clash of Clans; Hay Day SurveyMonkey 397 surveys 206, 209 synapses 10 Systrom, Kevin 71–80 tablets 7 Tableau Software 90 Taleb, Nicholas Nassim 54 Tamir, Diana 51 Tap Tap Revolution (game) 42 Target 419 taxation 164 taxi hailing apps see Hailo app TaxiLight 16 team builders 264 team building 188–91 teams 82, 174, 252, 390 complementary people 409–10 for five-hundred-million-dollar apps 326, 342–5, 357–63, 374, 386 growth 313–14, 326, 342–4 for hundred-million-dollar apps 258–61 located in one place 193–4 marketing 262–6, 342–4 marketing engineering 344–5 product development and engineering 357–63 ‘two-pizza’ 374 TechCrunch Disrupt 97, 99 technology conferences 97–8, 202, 312–13 Techstars 159, 160, 168 Tencent 307 Tencent QQ 226 term sheets 168, 169, 170, 243–4 testing 126–8, 177–8, 187–8, 192–3, 199–201 beta 201–4 channels 224–7 text messaging 21 unlimited packages 42 see also Short Message Service ‘thinking big’ 40–59, 82, 85 big problem solutions 41–3 disruptive ideas 53–9 human universals 44–5 sharing big 51–2, 52 smartphones uses 45–50 Thoughtworks 196 time, spent checking smartphones 25–6, 26, 45–50 Tito, Dennis 13 tone of voice 111 top-down approaches 311 traction 233, 252 traffic information apps 43 traffic trackers 146 translation 296–7 transparency 311–12, 412–13 Trilogy 13 Tumblr 110, 226, 399, 418 Twitter 41, 48, 54, 72, 226, 394 acquisitions 418 and application programming interface 36 and Bootstrap 145 and business identity 114 delivering delight 206 and e-commerce decisions 272 and FreeMyApps.com 271 funding 419, 421 and getting your app found 147 initial public offering 421 and Instagram 51, 76–7, 79–80 name 110 and virality 281 ‘two-pizza’ teams 374 Uber 6, 36, 87, 89, 333, 350 and attribution for referrals 231 design 131 funding 320, 384, 422 international growth 295, 299–302 name 107, 110 revenue engine 276 revenue per employee 401 scaling product innovation 355–6 staff 339, 399 user notifications 292 virality 280 Under Armour 419 Union Square Ventures (USV) 3, 158, 242, 261, 262, 288, 321, 323, 377, 383 unique propositions 198 UnitedHealth Group 419 URLs 110 ‘user experience’ (UX) experts 190 user journeys 127–8, 213–14 user notifications 291–4 user stories 193 users 83, 175, 252, 327, 390 activation 136, 137, 139, 153–4, 211–12, 213 annual revenue per user (ARPU) 215, 219, 232, 236 communication with 208–9 definition 137 emotional response of 223–4 fanatical 294 finding apps 140–8 lifetime value (LTV) 184, 215, 219, 220–1, 232, 275–7, 279, 291 metrics 136–9 net-adding of 206 ratings plus comments 204–5 referrals 137, 138, 139, 153, 154, 211–12, 213, 230–1 target 83, 115, 127 wants 180–97 see also acquisition (of users); retention (of users) Usertesting.com 200–1 USV see Union Square Ventures valuations 83, 161–3, 175, 237–8, 238, 253, 318, 319, 322, 327, 333, 391 venture capital 72, 75, 156–8, 165–6, 235–49, 261–2, 383–5, 385, 418–19 Viber app 6, 46, 1341 video calls 46, 47 viral coefficient 282–4 ‘viral’ growth 225, 278, 279–84 Communication virality 281 and cycle time 283–4 incentivised virality 280–1 inherent virality 280 measurement 282–4 social-network virality 281 word-of-mouth virality 281–2 virtual reality 39 vision 261, 393–4, 408–9, 414, 415 voice calls 46–7 voice-over-Internet protocol (VOIP) 46 voicemail 50 Wall Street Journal 43, 55 warranties 246 Waze app 6, 43, 97 acquisition 415–16 design 131 name 107 zero-user-acquisition cost 278 web browsing 49 Web Summit 97 websites 113–14, 144–8 WebTranslateIt (WTI) 297 WeChat app 46, 226, 306 Weibo 48 Weiner, Jeff 408–9 Wellington Partners 4 Weskamp, Marcos 207 Westergren, Tim 410 WhatsApp 6, 42, 46, 54–6, 87, 90, 226, 394 acquisition 42, 54–6, 416, 416–17, 417 cofounders 96 design 131, 144 funding 154, 320–1 platform 117–18 valuations 333 virality 280 White, Emily 340 Williams, Evan 41, 65 Williams, Rich 344 Wilson, Fred 110, 242, 288, 323, 377 Windows (Microsoft) 20–1, 22, 24, 24 Winklevoss twins 105 wireframes 127–8 Woolley, Caspar 15–16, 95, 124, 338 WooMe.com 14, 87–8, 101–2, 263 Workday 90 world population 9–10 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 313 wowing people 8–9 WTI see WebTranslateIt Xiaomi 306 Y Combinator 159–60, 184–5, 211, 407, 410–11 Yahoo!

The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha

Airbnb, Andy Kessler, Apollo 13, Benchmark Capital, Black Swan, business intelligence, Cal Newport, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, David Brooks, Donald Trump, Dunbar number, en.wikipedia.org, fear of failure, follow your passion, future of work, game design, independent contractor, information security, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joi Ito, late fees, lateral thinking, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, out of africa, PalmPilot, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, public intellectual, recommendation engine, Richard Bolles, risk tolerance, rolodex, Salesforce, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social web, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, the strength of weak ties, Tony Hsieh, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen

Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1994): 113. 14. See Dunbar’s book How Many Friends Does One Person Need? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), as well as the Wikipedia entry for Dunbar’s Number, http://​en.​wikipedia.​org/​wiki/​Dunbar’s_​number. Also see Christopher Allen’s nuanced parsing of the concept, “The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes,” Life with Alacrity (blog), March 10, 2004, http://​www.​life​withalacrity.​com/​2004/​03/​the_​dunbar_​numb.​html 15. Jeffrey Travers and Stanley Milgram, “An Experimental Study in the Small World Problem,” Sociometry 35, no. 4 (1969): 425–43, doi:10.1109/TIT.2010.2054490 16.

The Great Fragmentation: And Why the Future of All Business Is Small by Steve Sammartino

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, augmented reality, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, bitcoin, BRICs, Buckminster Fuller, citizen journalism, collaborative consumption, cryptocurrency, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, deep learning, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Dunbar number, Elon Musk, fiat currency, Frederick Winslow Taylor, game design, gamification, Google X / Alphabet X, haute couture, helicopter parent, hype cycle, illegal immigration, index fund, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Law of Accelerating Returns, lifelogging, market design, Mary Meeker, Metcalfe's law, Minecraft, minimum viable product, Network effects, new economy, peer-to-peer, planned obsolescence, post scarcity, prediction markets, pre–internet, profit motive, race to the bottom, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, remote working, RFID, Rubik’s Cube, scientific management, self-driving car, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, social graph, social web, software is eating the world, Steve Jobs, subscription business, survivorship bias, The Home Computer Revolution, the long tail, too big to fail, US Airways Flight 1549, vertical integration, web application, zero-sum game

INDEX 3D printing access and accessibility see also barriers; communication; digital; social media — factors of production — knowledge adoption rates advertising see also marketing; mass media; promotion; television Airbnb Alibaba Amazon antifragility Apple artisanal production creativity audience see also crowd — connecting with — vs target Away from Keyboard (AFK) banking see also crowdfunding; currencies barriers Beck (musician) big as a disadvantage bioengineering biomimicry biotechnology bitcoins blogs borrowed interest brand business strategies change see disruption and disruptive change Cluetrain Manifesto co-creation coffee culture Cold War collaboration collaborative consumption collective sentience commerce, future see also retail and retailers communication see also advertising; promotion; social media; social relationships — channels — tools community vs target competition and competitors component retail computers see also connecting and connection; internet; networks; smartphones; social media; software; technology era; 3D printing; web connecting and connection see also social media; social relationships — home/world — machines — people — things consumerism consumption silos content, delivery of coopetition corporations see also industrial era; retail and retailers; technology era costs see also finance; price co-working space creativity crowd, contribution by the crowdfunding cryptocurrencies culture — hacking — startup currencies see also banking deflation demographics device convergence digital see also computers; internet; music; smartphone; retail and retailers, online; social media; social relationships; technology; web; work — cohorts — era — footprint — revolution — skills — strategy — tools — world disruption and disruptive change DNA as an operating system drones Dunbar's number e-commerce see retail and retailers, online economic development, changing education employment, lifetime see also labour; work ephermalization Facebook see also social media finance, peer to peer see also banking; crowdfunding; currencies Ford, Henry 4Ps Foursquare fragmentation — of cities — industrial — Lego car example gadgets see also computers; smartphone; tools games and gaming behaviour gamification geo-location glass cockpit Global Financial Crisis (GFC) globalisation Google hacking hourglass strategy IFTTT (If this then that) industrialists (capital class) industry, redefining industrial era see also consumerism; marketing; retail and retailers — hacking — life in influencers information-based work infrastructure — changing — declining importance of — legacy innovation intention interest-based groups see also niches interest graphs internet see also access and accessibility; connecting and connection; social media; social relationships; web Internet.org In Real Life (IRL) isolation iTunes see also music Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act (USA) keyboards knowledge economy lab vs factory labour see also work — low-cost language layering legacy — industries — infrastructure — media Lego car project life — in boxes — in gaming future — hack living standards see also life location see place, work making see also artisanal production; retail and retailers; 3D printing malleable marketplace manufacturing see also artisanal production; industrial era; making; product; 3D printing; tools — desktop marketing see also advertising; consumerism; 4Ps; mass media; promotion; retail and retailers — demographics, use in — industrial era — language — mass — metrics — new — post-industrial — predictive — research — target — traditional mass media ; see also advertising; marketing; media; promotion; television — after materialism media see also communication; legacy; mass media; newspapers; niches; television — consumption — hacking — platform vs content — subscription Metcalfe's law MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) Moore's law music Napster Netflix netizens networks see also connecting and connection; media; social media; social relationships newspapers see also media niches nodes nondustrial company Oaida, Raul oDesk office, end of the omniconnection era open source parasocial interaction payment systems Pebble phones, number of mobile see also smartphones photography Pinterest piracy place — of work platforms pop culture power-generating technologies price see also costs privacy see also social media; social relationships product — unfinished production see also industrial era; product; 3D printing — mass projecteer Project October Sky promotion see also advertising; marketing; mass media; media quantified self Racovitsa, Vasilii remote controls RepRap 3D printer retail cold spot retail and retailers — changing — digital — direct — hacking — mass — online — price — small — strategies — traditional rewards robots Sans nation state economy scientific management search engines self-hacking self-publishing self-storage sensors sharing see also social media; social relationships smartphones smartwatch social graphs social media (digitally enhanced conversation) see also Facebook; social relationships; Twitter; YouTube social relationships see also social graphs; social media — digital software speed subcultures Super Awesome Micro Project see Lego car project Super Bowl mentality target tastemakers technology see also computers; digital; open source; social media; smartphones; social relationships; software; 3D printing; work — deflation — era — free — revolution — speed — stack teenagers, marketing to television Tesla Motors thingernet thinking and technology times tools see also artisanal production; communication; computers; digital; making; smartphones; social media; 3D printing — changing — old trust Twitter Uber unlearning usability gap user experience volumetric mindset wages — growth — low — minimum web see also connecting and connection; digital; internet; retail and retailers, online; social media; social relationships — three phases of — tools Wikipedia work — digital era — industrial era — location of — options words see language Yahoo YouTube Learn more with practical advice from our experts WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT Go to www.wiley.com/go/eula to access Wiley’s ebook EULA.

War by Sebastian Junger

Demis Hassabis, Dunbar number, friendly fire, RAND corporation, satellite internet, Yom Kippur War

The larger the neocortex, he reasoned, the more individuals with whom you could maintain personal relationships. Dunbar then compared primate brains to human brains and used the differential to predict the ideal size for a group of humans. The number he came up with was 147.8 people. Rounded up to 150, it became known as the Dunbar number, and it happened to pop up everywhere. A survey of ethnographic data found that precontact hunter-gatherers around the world lived in shifting communities that ranged from 90 to 221 people, with an average of 148. Neolithic villages in Mesopotamia were thought to have had around 150 people. The Roman army of the classical period used a formation of 130 men — called a maniple, or a double century — in combat.

Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life by Colin Ellard

Apollo 11, augmented reality, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Broken windows theory, Buckminster Fuller, carbon footprint, classic study, cognitive load, commoditize, crowdsourcing, data science, Dunbar number, Frank Gehry, gentrification, Google Glasses, Guggenheim Bilbao, haute couture, Howard Rheingold, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Lewis Mumford, mandelbrot fractal, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, mass immigration, megastructure, mirror neurons, Mondo 2000, more computing power than Apollo, Oculus Rift, overview effect, Peter Eisenman, RFID, Richard Florida, risk tolerance, sentiment analysis, Skinner box, smart cities, starchitect, TED Talk, the built environment, theory of mind, time dilation, urban decay, urban planning, urban sprawl, Victor Gruen

The flickering stream of status updates, always available when you want to look, but not necessarily demanding focal attention, strike a strong parallel with these kinds of primitive, casual exchanges of information. It’s interesting in this regard that the median number of Facebook friends for a user is around two hundred—within close range of the famed Dunbar number of 150, argued by anthropologist Robin Dunbar to be the rough capacity of the human mind for stable relationships and a close match with the average number of participants in many different kinds of social organizations ranging from Neolithic farming villages to modern military company sizes.28 Although the comparison between our use of online social networks for monitoring of ubiquitous social presence and the behavior of Neolithic farmers gazing around the fireplace might be tantalizing, there is one very important difference between these two types of networks.

The Vanishing Neighbor: The Transformation of American Community by Marc J. Dunkelman

Abraham Maslow, adjacent possible, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, assortative mating, Berlin Wall, big-box store, blue-collar work, Bretton Woods, Broken windows theory, business cycle, call centre, clean water, company town, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, David Brooks, delayed gratification, different worldview, double helix, Downton Abbey, Dunbar number, Edward Jenner, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gentrification, George Santayana, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, global supply chain, global village, helicopter parent, if you build it, they will come, impulse control, income inequality, invention of movable type, Jane Jacobs, Khyber Pass, Lewis Mumford, Louis Pasteur, Marshall McLuhan, McMansion, Nate Silver, obamacare, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, Peter Thiel, post-industrial society, Richard Florida, rolodex, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Skype, social intelligence, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, telemarketer, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the medium is the message, the strength of weak ties, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, urban decay, urban planning, Walter Mischel, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

Dunbar, “Coevolution of Neocortical Size, Group Size, and Language in Humans,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (1993): 681–735. 5Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2000). 6Dunbar, “Coevolution of Neocortical Size, Group Size, and Language in Humans,” 683. 7Dunbar, “Coevolution of Neocortical Size, Group Size, and Language in Humans,” 685–86. 8Dunbar, “Coevolution of Neocortical Size, Group Size, and Language in Humans,” 684–85; http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-10/the-dunbar-number-from-the-guru-of-social-networks. 9R. A. Hill and R. I. M. Dunbar, “Social Network Size in Humans,” Human Nature 14, no. 1 (2003). 10John Markoff and Somini Sengupta, “Separating You and Me? 4.74 Degrees,” New York Times, November 21, 2011. 11Claude S. Fischer, To Dwell Among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 139–44. 12Sam G.

Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries by Safi Bahcall

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, AOL-Time Warner, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Astronomia nova, behavioural economics, Boeing 747, British Empire, Cass Sunstein, Charles Lindbergh, Clayton Christensen, cognitive bias, creative destruction, disruptive innovation, diversified portfolio, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dunbar number, Edmond Halley, Gary Taubes, Higgs boson, hypertext link, industrial research laboratory, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Ivan Sutherland, Johannes Kepler, Jony Ive, knowledge economy, lone genius, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Mother of all demos, Murray Gell-Mann, PageRank, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Pierre-Simon Laplace, power law, prediction markets, pre–internet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, random walk, reality distortion field, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, six sigma, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, synthetic biology, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tim Cook: Apple, tulip mania, Wall-E, wikimedia commons, yield management

“smallest independent units”: Dunbar, “Constraint,” 686. “parking spaces”: Gladwell, 185. The magic number: Management trends: O’Leonard; Rajan. Andrew, R. J., et al. “Open Peer Commentary on ‘Coevolution of Neocortical Size, Group Size and Language in Humans.’” Behav. Brain Sci. 16 (1993): 681. Bennett, Drake. “The Dunbar Number.” Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Jan. 14, 2013: 52. Bowman, Matthew Burton. The Mormon People. Random House, 2012. Brodhead, Richard H. “Prophets in America ca. 1830.” J. Mormon Hist. 29 (2003): 43. Church Historian’s Press. “Brigham Young Vanguard Company (1847).” Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel, 1847–1868.

The Life and Death of Ancient Cities: A Natural History by Greg Woolf

agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, capital controls, classic study, Columbian Exchange, demographic transition, Dunbar number, Easter island, endogenous growth, Eratosthenes, European colonialism, global village, invention of agriculture, invention of writing, joint-stock company, mass immigration, megacity, New Urbanism, out of africa, Scramble for Africa, social intelligence, social web, the strength of weak ties, trade route, urban planning, urban sprawl, zoonotic diseases

Those settlements are best known in north Mesopotamia, but by the seventh millennium are documented from the foot of the Anatolian plateau down to the Persian Gulf. Farming villages of up to ten houses remained the largest kind of settlement for around two thousand years. The population of each village was usually less than the Dunbar number, the supposed maximum number of individuals with which each of us can maintain individual social relations. These were small worlds indeed. During the following millenia things did change, but mostly by small increments. A few more species were domesticated, some settlements and burials were sometimes a little richer, the scale of irrigation gradually increased.