Bootstrapping Complexity

This book tells you how to understand networks such as the internet and social networks. However it was written long before Facebook, or even the web, existed so it explains the principles of networks by examples in biology -- like a beehive, a rain forest, or immune system. It tells the story of how feedback loops can create new phenomena and govern old ones, and why letting innovations like a social network be "out of control" is a good thing. The author also visits technological labs and reports on what they discover as they try to create artificial intelligence from dumb chips, or robots from insect-like parts, or complex organizations from simple ones. If you want to understand how the hive-mind of Twitter or Wikipedia works, this is the best book on the subject. It is an abridged version of the original, Out of Control, edited to focus on the chapters that tell how to "bootstrap" large complex systems and to engineer governance in non-governable networks. While written 18 years ago, the examples and wisdom are timeless.