Network School Curriculum (archived)

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The curriculum for Network School v2 revolves around the broad area of building startup societies. Sample topics covered include:

Early American history and the settling of the Wild West
The fall and rise of modern China, India, Russia, and Eastern Europe
The creation of modern Singapore and Dubai
Biographies of political figures from Deng Xiaoping to Robert Moses
The decline of Argentina and South Africa
The case-control studies of East/West Germany, North/South Korea, and Taiwan/PRC
Edge cases like San Marino, Northern Cyprus, Transnistria
The technology-fueled ascendance of El Salvador and Bhutan
National turnarounds like the Meiji Restoration and Boluan Fanzheng
The unification of France, Italy, Germany, India, America, and China
Ancient history from Gobekli Tepe to the collapse of Rome
The history of tech companies on the English and Chinese Internet

The general theme is building, collapse, and rebirth — but at the scale of cities and countries, not just companies. This is the next step for technology, because heads of network like Elon, Satya, and Zuck are now on par with heads of state like Trump, Modi, and Xi.

Here’s a draft reading list.

Macrohistory: Foundation, The Lessons of History, Unqualified Reservations, A Short History of Nearly Everything, The Selfish Gene, Albion's Seed, War and Peace and War, Stalin's War, Energy and Civilization, Who We Are and How We Got Here, The Ancient City, The Fourth Turning, The Grey Lady Winked
New Countries: Imagined Communities, Invisible Countries, The Origins of Political Order, How to Hide an Empire, The House of Government
Political Case Studies: A New Idea of India, China's Political Model, Seeing Like a State, Tomorrow the World, From Third World to First, When Money Dies, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
Regulation: Where is My Flying Car?, Three Felonies a Day, Reputation and Power, The Power Broker
Rebuilding: The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom, How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Principles for a Changing World Order
Self-Improvement: Atomic Habits, Tools For Titans, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Tech: Zero to One (book) by Peter Thiel, Hard Thing about Hard Things, High Growth Handbook, AI Superpowers
Crypto: The Bitcoin Standard, Broken Money, The Sovereign Individual, The Truth Machine, Daemon
Startup Societies: Communistic Societies of the United States, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, The Network State

So, the general idea is to begin with macrohistorical context, zoom in to the details of how societies rise and fall, and then move to the specifics of how you’d (a) first build up yourself and then (b) build up your new society.

We’ll also have in-person and remote speakers of the quality we’ve had at the Network State Conference 2023 and 2024, and at Network School itself. Our past speakers include world-famous founders and investors like:

So: the topics, the reading, and the speakers give a common vocabulary for Network Schoolers on why we should build new societies and how others have done so in the past. With that foundation, we will add more content over time.