I recently read the book Breakpoint: Why the Web will Implode, Search will be Obsolete, and Everything Else you Need to Know about Technology is in Your Brain by Jeff Stibel and had my brain oozing out of my ears. It is a good thing my brain is pliable because this is the third straight book in a row to create this brain oozing problem.
I recently read Physics of the Future and as we are working on a student project over this book I started looking for new books to read to feed into the contents of this book. That is how I came across Breakpoint. I had it on my shelf for a while and finally started reading it. When I did I had it finished in a two days. I have literally over a hundred passages flagged for notes and ideas to ponder even further than what the book provides.
The book basically showcases that everything we need to know basically exists in terms of expectations and what is going to happen with things in life. Never in my life did I think I would connect the dots between ants, my brain, and MySpace. Never would I consider those three topics together in the first place. Stibel argues that all networks not matter what network develop the same way. He discusses how if you can get to the point of growth and in particular rapid growth you will eventually reach a breakpoint. The breakpoint is where you have grown too much and there is only one result which is decline. This decline is not a bad thing despite what people and society think. Instead you have to rethink certain measures to figure out what the best scenario will be to maintain an functioning and thriving network.
He shares examples of ant colonies and I was so fascinated that I am now pulling books to study more on ants because I was so fascinated. I found everything so interesting from the ants to the brain. He shares that the Internet will also hit a breakpoint when it can no longer become any larger. I have a hard time imaging this day and age and what that exactly looks like, but it makes sense in an abstract way. There will simply not be a sufficient way to keep up the exponential growth of the Internet and we will hit a peak due to storage, energy consumption, data, etc. Just like the movie Inception, mind blown!
If you are interested in the future, how networks operate, and how they evolve this is must read. I am taking time to sort my notes and work on blog posts on these topics to dive deeper. If you have read the book I would love to connect and do a podcast to discuss the topics. This is a book that leads to many conversations that I really want to have.
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