About 3/4 though the book now, and it's certainly worth reading for me.

Softwar may be an original thought in its exact manifestation, but it is standing on the shoulders of some older ideas. Lots of people have written about how bitcoin is the next level of power projection beyond kinetic energy, but Softwar seems to be the first formalized thesis on the topic, not just comments in threads.

However, while reading Softwar, it repeatedly reminds me of an author whose books from the 1990s repeatedly touched on the concept of human civilization reaching an unavoidable breaking point after which dissolution and reorganization becomes inevitable. The same author also described pre-industrial societies and their critical need to repeatedly engage in tribal warfare that severely injured, but did not kill their rivals in neighboring tribes.

It makes me want to read these books again (some for the third or fourth time), the books by Daniel Quinn, and his four books most relevant to the topic and theme of Softwar are:

"Ishmael" 1992

"The Story of ₿" 1996

"My Ishmael" 1997

"Beyond Civilization" 1999

Good reads for further exploration of ideas presented in Softwar.