Network School Curriculum

Topics, reading, and speakers.

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.

Reading

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, 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.

Speakers

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:

• Vitalik Buterin (Zuzalu, Ethereum)

• Naval Ravikant (Angellist)

• Bryan Johnson (Don't Die)

• Brian Armstrong (Coinbase)

• Pieter Levels (Nomads.com)

• Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Author and activist)

• Ranveer Allahbadia

• Raj Gokal (Solana)

• Zooko Wilcox (Zcash)

• Olaf Carlson-Wee (Polychain)

• Jesse Pollak (Coinbase Base)

• Niall Ferguson (Author and historian)

• Dan Romero (Farcaster)

• Glenn Greenwald

• Amjad Masad (Replit)

• Garry Tan (YCombinator)

• Codie Sanchez (Author & investor)

• Alana Newhouse (Tablet)

• Richard Sutton (The Bitter Lesson)

• Ryan Petersen (Flexport)

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.