Banks lend only the principal. However, loans must be repaid plus interest — and with long-term loans like mortgages, the total interest payments far… - Daniel Suarez

Further Reading You can learn more about the technologies and themes explored in Freedom™ through the following books: Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Penguin Press The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, Metropolitan Books When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce, Beacon Press The Shadow Factory by James Bamford, Doubleday When Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten, Kumarian Press & Berrett-Koehler Publishers The Transparent Society by David Brin, Basic Books Wired for War by P. W. Singer, Penguin Press The Populist Moment by Lawrence Goodwyn, Oxford University Press Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, Portfolio Brave New War by John Robb, John Wiley & Sons

They’d had so much more luck investing in eccentric B and C students. The rationale was simple: Those heavily invested in the status quo had difficulty thinking outside of it — and were often tainted by it. Especially when success and peer approval beckoned. One did not accidentally graduate from top-tier schools. One strove to get in and to maintain grades once there, and to do that, one usually needed to be a master at conformity. To excel in all the accepted conventions.

Technology. It is the physical manifestation of the human will. It began with simple tools. Then came the wheel, and on it goes to this very day. Civilizations rise and fall based on technological innovation. Bronze falls to iron. Iron falls to steel. Steel falls to gunpowder. Gunpowder falls to circuitry. Sobol looked toward the camera again. "For those among you who don't understand what's happening, let me explain: the Great Diffusion has begun—an era when the nation state dissolves. Technology will cause this. As countries compete for markets in the global economy, diffusion of high technology will accelerate. It will result in a diffusion of power. And diffusion of power will make countries an ineffective organizing principle. At first, marginal governments will fail. Larger states will not be equipped to intercede effectively. These lawless regions will become breeding grounds for international crime and terrorism. Threats to centralized authority will multiply. Centralized power will be defenseless against these distributed threats. You have already experienced the leading edge of this wave."