Submit Manuscript | http://medcraveonline.com of modern economies. The key now lies not so much in traditional production factors but rather in the information a specifc society – people, groups, companies and institutions - is capable of processing and sharing through networks in order to generate knowledge and productive know-how. 1 Setting aside the traditional victimism that dominates the discourse of many countries which do not manage to achieve optimum economic development, but without disparaging the validity of their arguments, in his book Why Information Grows, César A. Hidalgo (Artifcial and Natural Intelligence Institute at the Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées and founder of Datawheel LLC) suggests a new approach to economic growth. This is based on the capacity to construct reality through the imagination - as crystals of solidifed imagination – rather than the possibility of buying, consuming, selling or producing. Taking this as a starting point, Hidalgo puts forward the idea of economic complexity as the main driving force for the development of modern economies. The key now lies not so much in traditional production factors but rather in the information a specifc society – people, groups, companies and institutions - is capable of processing and sharing through networks in order to generate knowledge and productive know-how. In the frst chapter, “The Secret to Time Travel”, Hidalgo looks in depth at the diference between two fundamental capacities linked to the computing that is crucial for accumulating information in the economy and society: knowledge and know-how. Knowledge is what allows us to explain and predict the results of something, like an action, through the establishment of links or relationships between organisations without the need for it to form part of the process; while know-how is what underlies the actions we carry out even though we may not be able to explain how. In the second chapter, “The Body of the Meaningless”, Hidalgo explores the idea of information expressed by Claude Shannon, father of communication theory and one of the frst theorists of Artifcial Intelligence, and its relevance today. Shannon, together with his colleague Warren Weaver, extracts the traditional sense of the concept information as “meaning” and its mathematical content as “data”. In this way, Shannon manages to show information as “the smallest volume of data necessary to be able to specify a message”. Machines could therefore be designed capable of transmitting information from one point to another without the need to worry about its meaning. However, there is no mention of Shannon’s theorem of the imperfection of information. In the third chapter, “The Eternal Anomaly”, Hidalgo refects on the irreversibility of time and the origin of information. To do this, he combines ideas from Ilya Prigogine and Erwin Schrödinger to explain where information comes from (a stationary state that is out of balance); how it can be generated and can last longer (because it is stored in solids) and what allows it to grow: the capacity of computing equipment. As a result, Hidalgo demonstrates that information is prebiotic, much older than the appearance of human beings and primarily lacking meaning. It is irreversible in time because of the instantaneous nature of reality and the phenomenon of the entropic barrier, and its complexity increases with its richness. In the fourth chapter, “Out of Our Heads”, Hidalgo concerns himself with reinterpreting the world, particularly the economic world, as crystals of solidifed imagination. In the case of economics, as he interprets the products and services in the market as exchanges of human imagination, 19th-century economic concepts such as the balance of payments are shown to be incomplete, lacking important information that would provide an understanding of the diference between a country’s wealth and its economic development. While wealth is related to those who possess and extract a specifc raw material, such as copper, for example, or produce something with it, like pipes or electric cables, economic development has a lot more to do with those who imagine a possible application of the material and crystallise their information in a stable, exportable product or service. Economic development is therefore not related to capacity to buy or consume or sell or product, but rather to the construction of reality through the imagination, and this requires a large quantity of knowledge and know-how. Thus, we can see how economically more developed countries are not necessarily those that are wealthier in raw materials or produce more products. In the ffth chapter, “Amplifers”, Hidalgo analyses the practical uses of the human capacity to crystallise imagination, including the distribution of the practical uses of knowledge and know-how. He also suggests that products are means of creative expression, human enrichment and combinatorial creativity. Hidalgo’s view is that we want to crystallise our imagination in the form of products for many reasons, including their capacity to enrich and improve human capabilities; improve people’s welfare by sharing our creativity, points of view and moods with others; and increase individual knowledge and its benefts for ourselves and others through the contributions of others, in a sense very similar to the idea “on the soldiers of giants” expressed by Robert Burton (1577-1640) 2 in his book The Anatomy of Melancholy (1628). So, beyond its capacity for the efcient Sociology Int J. 2021;5(1):19‒21. 19 ©2021 Calvo. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially. Why Information Grows? The evolution of order, from atoms to economies Volume 5 Issue 1 - 2021 Patrici Calvo Universitat Jaume, Spain Correspondence: Dr. Patrici Calvo, Universitat Jaume I, Spain, Email Received: Februry 15, 2020 | Published: Februry 26, 2021 Soiology International Journal Book Review Open Access Introduction Economic growth is one of the main concerns of modern societies. Although many countries have great natural, productive and human resources and purchasing power making it possible for them to design and set up a strong, dynamic, advanced economy, many of them continue to be tied to dependent, lethargic or unsustainable economic growth processes. Ubiquity is therefore one of the main features of modern economic development. Hidalgo puts forward the idea of economic complexity as the main driving force for the development