Great perspective shift from typical History, paying attention to energy gradients, complexity, and thinking in terms of large scale trends. He has some provocative comments about capitalism requiring a wide wealth gradient, which relates beautifully to his theme, but which is completely unsupported by evidence or references. My biggest take away is that Information Science could unify the sciences with the soft social sciences if it can adequately improve its definition of complexity so that networks of ideas or matter or people can be classified and developed in the abstract.