Archipelago, and the information platform that is the state

This book outlines a new political philosophy that is based on information and its processing.

Aristotelians will appreciate the analysis; those siding with Plato (there are only two kinds of people, as Coleridge said), less so. In essence, it supports Aristotle’s argument by complementing his intuitively correct but unsupported and never fully elaborated claim that states are natural to humans. It corrects Plato and his epigones (practically every political philosopher ever since) by refuting their claim (considered a given today) that states are artificial, the product of agreement among humans.

It is based on only two basic, and straightforward, premises. Therefore, understanding it (but not necessarily appreciating it—for that one has to follow the order of things) can be achieved in anything from a few minutes (see only Chapters 7 and 19) to a few hours (add Chapters 8, 9 and 11), a few days (Chapter 7 onwards) or a few months and beyond (read also Chapters 1–6). Each chapter is independently written specifically for this purpose, and therefore, there is some repetition. Notes (only paragraphs marked with an asterisk are annotated, at the end of the book) are there to help explain—but they do add considerably to the times just promised.