The World in Which We Live - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Friends, I have seven points. Why seven? Because I’ve been reading too much Babylonian history recently. The first one is about concentration, a distinctive feature of the modern world, often tied to what I called the Black Swan problem. We now see winner-take-all effects everywhere, owing to connectivity. Imagine an island with many species but a high density per square meter. Compare that to a continent, where opening up space leads to fewer species per meter becausesome will eventually dominate. This mirrors cultural and economic life today. Take books, for instance. Everyone reads the same ones — think Harry Potteror, for music, The Beatles. In publishing, a few authors prevail. You either sell 20 million copies or you’re working at Starbucks (unless you boycott the firm, as I do personally). This concentration applies to opera singers too. In the past, they could make a living locally because there were no audiovisual recordings. Now, a few stars capture most of the income. This c

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• Manh Duc Hoang