Scan barcode
A review by thomas_edmund
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Holy moly, I really don't think this book could be less-than-topical right now. In Nexus, Harari covers A.I., information vs truth, democracy and totalitarianisms, and even where and how religion fits in with this all!!
I've been a pretty big fan of Harari since Sapiens and while Homo Duex is technically the 'futurist' book, however Nexus feels much more topical and relevant for the future. It's interesting because technically A.I. is the main focus of the book but in a big way the 'Nexus' pulls all the topics mentioned above together into a relevant thesis.
It's hard to summarize such a big tome into a useful review - I think the three 'big ideas' that Harari captures are:
The difference between information and truth, and how 'political mythology' and bureaucratic interact to create systems.
The key areas that A.I. differ from human thinking, e.g. scale and nature of information processing.
How A.I. will likely influence democracies AND authoritarian states (and perhaps even change a few from one to the other). By far the funniest point was talking about bots and election interference, but how bots would also undermine fascists due to being unable to be crushed with fear tactics (maybe that's just my copium laughing though)
Almost every section of the book provoked a lot of thinking, however the strongest message for me was understanding the nature of human mythologizing, myths aren't just ancient, we're creating them all the time - and then it comes to politics its how myths connect people that makes the difference (fascist myths connect people against fictional enemies for example).
I strongly recommend picking this book up, Harari's prose is at once appropriately technically, while also strangely firey and blunt, I wouldn't call this book easy read by any stretch but it is accessible (if like you me you give yourself a bit of time between reads to process).
I've been a pretty big fan of Harari since Sapiens and while Homo Duex is technically the 'futurist' book, however Nexus feels much more topical and relevant for the future. It's interesting because technically A.I. is the main focus of the book but in a big way the 'Nexus' pulls all the topics mentioned above together into a relevant thesis.
It's hard to summarize such a big tome into a useful review - I think the three 'big ideas' that Harari captures are:
The difference between information and truth, and how 'political mythology' and bureaucratic interact to create systems.
The key areas that A.I. differ from human thinking, e.g. scale and nature of information processing.
How A.I. will likely influence democracies AND authoritarian states (and perhaps even change a few from one to the other). By far the funniest point was talking about bots and election interference, but how bots would also undermine fascists due to being unable to be crushed with fear tactics (maybe that's just my copium laughing though)
Almost every section of the book provoked a lot of thinking, however the strongest message for me was understanding the nature of human mythologizing, myths aren't just ancient, we're creating them all the time - and then it comes to politics its how myths connect people that makes the difference (fascist myths connect people against fictional enemies for example).
I strongly recommend picking this book up, Harari's prose is at once appropriately technically, while also strangely firey and blunt, I wouldn't call this book easy read by any stretch but it is accessible (if like you me you give yourself a bit of time between reads to process).