CONCEPT
Personbytes
Hidalgo's unit for the finite productive knowledge a single human being can hold — the mathematical reason why the most complex products in the economy cannot be made by individuals.
A personbyte is the amount of productive knowledge one person can hold. Not measured in bits, though the metaphor is deliberate; measured in capability — the set of things one person can know well enough to do. A master carpenter holds a certain number of personbytes; a software architect holds a different set. Neither can build an automobile, because automobile production requires knowledge exceeding the personbyte capacity of any individual by orders of magnitude. This is why firms exist: to link the personbyte capacities of multiple individuals into coordinated wholes. The concept explains why productive complexity is an institutional rather than individual achievement — and why AI, by expanding the effective codifiable personbyte capacity of individuals, restructures rather than abolishes the underlying constraint.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The personbyte framework emerged from Hidalgo's attempt to quantify why some countries produce complex products and others do not. The answer is not primarily resources, capital, or conventional education. It is the density of productive knowledge