Nexus A brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to AI

Review by Choice Review

At first glance, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI seems aimed at a small audience of librarians and information specialists. However, it's important that this book be read by a much broader audience concerned with history, technical information, networks, public information, politics, psychology, and even philosophy and theology. Yuval Noah Harari (history, Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem, Israel) addresses the way we accept and assimilate the mountains of information (and disinformation) accessible to us, what or whom we trust, and our capacity for critical thought. As Dennis Duncan notes in his review in The New York Times, Nexus is actually two books in one. As Harari lays out in the twenty-page prologue, which serves as an abstract for the book, the first three chapters describe information, documents, and networks, and the succeeding eight chapters discuss the use of these resources, infallibility, democracies, totalitarianism, and finally the "Silicon Curtain." Over 100,000 years, Homo sapiens has acquired power through discoveries, inventions, and conquest, but power does not lead to wisdom. Information is assimilated both as individuals and as groups, which leads to networks. Harari compares classical fables describing failed strivings for wisdom to more modern history, when at least two totalitarian powers failed in their attempts. We may be witnessing increased attempts by Populists to further their power via information. The naïve view of information is that it leads to truth, which leads to both wisdom and power. So what is truth? The prime principle of logic states that valid conclusions can only be drawn from valid premises. Therefore, valid truth comes from valid information. However, the exploding plethora of information, with increasing availability of access, also proliferates invalid data and information. Practitioners even term the output "alternative truth," denying objective truth and arguing that truth is held only by the individual. Actually, this perversion of information leads to ignorance. As Orwell stated, ignorance is strength, and it is the source of power that politicians and autocrats use to justify their actions and philosophies. Modern Populist seekers and wielders of power (Harari names Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil) expand their use of power. Power becomes their only reality, and information--their information--becomes a weapon. One branch of Populism acknowledges truth from revelation, religious or otherwise. Scientific research has become labeled as not seeking objective truth, but as using power to determine what is truth in the service of elites. This is the philosophy of Populist power. In part 1, "Human Networks," chapter 1 asks and answers, "What Is Information?" There are many definitions, leading to the repeated question, "What Is Truth?" Other sections include "What Information Does" and "Information in Human History." The Bible figures prominently in the discussion, but the main answer is connectivity, which has formed throughout human history. To quote Harari (p xxx), "History isn't the study of the past, it is the study of change … what remains the same, what changes, and how things change." "How well does information represent reality?" and "Is it true or false?" are important questions. Equally important are "How well does it connect people?" and "What networks are created?" Connections between information are best told through stories, which are the subject of chapter 2. Harari describes Biblical and Marxist philosophies and Nazism. Germans had a choice for betterment in the 1930s and chose the wrong path, whereas the subsequent liberal democracy did lead to improvement in their lives. Information can yield both truth and order, truth can yield wisdom, and both truth and order can yield power. Chapter 3, "Documents," describes the evolution of stories and lists (of data) into information. Stories are more easily grasped than boring but necessary data. Documents appeared as early as four millennia ago. Within 300 years, new problems arose with archiving and retrieving documents. Documents began to replace biological memory. Organizations and bureaucracy were developed to help with retrieval, but they produced their own set of problems. However, they try to maintain order. Chapter 4 describes the fantasy of infallibility by discussing Bible codification, which led to perceived enemies, like witches and heretics. These abuses led to the discovery of ignorance and self-correction, which don't always work. Chapter 5 discusses decisions, democracy and totalitarianism, and their evolved histories. Part 2, "The Inorganic Network," covers the use of computers in creating and maintaining networks. Chapter 6 discusses how computers differ from printing presses, how humans serve as connectors between documents, and how computers, which are prone to hacking, have replaced networks. Chapter 7, "Relentless: The Network is Always On," discusses the omnipresence of digital networks resulting in surveillance, spying, security, and privacy. Chapter 8, "Fallible: The Network is Often Wrong," discusses nonhuman intelligence, quantifying suffering, computer mythologies and bias, and the introduction of artificial intelligence. In part 3, "Computer Politics," chapter 9 covers democracies and conversations, self-correction, consequences of actions, and regulation of systems. Chapter 10, "Totalitarianism: All Power to the Algorithms?," discusses AI, data floods, and monopolies. Chapter 12 is titled "The Silicon Curtain: Global Empire or Global Split." Analogous to the divisions created by the Iron Curtain in the 1940s, a new "Silicon Curtain" may separate us all via opaque algorithms from digital and political overlords. Chapter 12 further examines dependence on AI, code wars, and hot wars. In the epilogue, Harari discusses his take on the history, evolution, and uses of AI and networks and his hope for control, good decisions, and wise uses for these programs. This quality publication is timely, considering the current state of politics and information, domestic and global. Recommended to all those interested in STEM, history, information, computing, AI, politics, psychology, philosophy, theology, and journalism as well as general audiences. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers through faculty. --Robert Edward Buntrock, independent scholar

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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Review by Booklist Review

Harari's monumental blockbuster, Sapiens (2015), demonstrated his considerable talent for working on a grand scale, presenting copious information and distilling it down to its essential concepts. That ability to discern relevant details, identify connections, and present arguments in a lively, often personal manner makes Harari the ideal candidate to tackle the history of information itself. He elegantly guides readers through the earliest examples of written records on stone tablets all the way through the advent of social media and the increasing concerns over AI. In between, we learn a wealth of fascinating facts about the role information played in early city states, the origin of bureaucracy, the printing press, witch hunts, ethnic cleansing, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. Harari details the origins of various religious texts as examples of how information is malleable, open to interpretation, vulnerable to bias, fallible, and, ultimately, susceptible to the machinations of human agents. Harari draws on history, philosophy, science, psychology, and political theory to present a plethora of examples of information as the current running beneath all human endeavor. Indeed, it is Harari's genius to untangle complex patterns to reveal complicated structures while illuminating the connections to our everyday lives. An important and timely must-read as our survival is at the mercy of information.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Burgeoning concerns over AI and Harari's stellar reputation will have readers reaching for this promising title.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Bestseller Harari (Homo Deus) offers an ambitious but muddled meditation on the past and future of information technology. Positing all human history as a history of information--and defining information as "something that creates new realities"--Harari ends up telling a cautionary tale about the power of stories. He argues that prehistoric humans' harnessing of information technologies led to the emergence of a new " of reality"--the realm of shared belief--and that manipulations of this realm via new information technologies account for both advancements in human civilization and sweeping social ills (for example, the ancient invention of the written document led to bureaucracy, while the 20th century's overabundance of the written document enabled totalitarianism). Harari sees the rise of artificial intelligence as an inflection point, one that leads either to unprecedented opportunity or to humanity's obsolescence. Harari's historical arguments are vague and prone to circular logic, and though his discussion of AI is more focused, he confusingly levels sharp critiques of tech gurus' utopian claims (raising salient points about the dangerous role algorithms have already begun playing in policing, for example) while still taking their dystopian ones at face value (prognosticating on a rise-of-the-machines scenario in which "AI will just grab power to itself"). Readers who enjoy Harari as a kind of freewheeling conversation partner will find food for thought here. But take this with a heaping dose of salt. (Sept.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The author ofHomo Deus considers the future of information networks. His international bestseller laying out ideas on human destiny is a hard act to follow, but Harari manages. The first part examines past information networks, leading with the intriguing declaration that "most information isnot an attempt to represent reality.…What information does is to create new realities by tying together disparate things." What that means is that "errors, lies, fantasies, and fictions are information, too." Information is often wrong, and more information does not necessarily improve matters, so it's essential that institutions contain self-correcting mechanisms. Our Constitution receives high marks for allowing amendments; holy books considered infallible, like the Bible and Quran, create problems and "hold important lessons for the attempt to create infallible AIs." The second part deals with governments whose information networks maintain a balance between truth and order, arguing that just as sacrificing truth for the sake of order comes with a cost, so does sacrificing order for truth. Modern technology enabled large-scale democracy as well as large-scale authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Harari deplores the conception that democracies operate through majority rule. In fact, he argues, democracies guarantee everyone liberties that even the majority cannot take away. This is a sophisticated concept that current events suggest is not universally accepted, and recent advances in artificial intelligence may be an additional destabilizing force. Harari warns that modern societies controlled by carbon-based life forms (us) must deal with inorganic, silicon-based networks (AI) that, unlike the printing press, the radio, and other inventions, can make decisions and create ideas by themselves. AI's ability to gather massive amounts of information and engage in total surveillance "will not necessarily be either bad or good. All we know for sure is that it will be alien and it will be fallible." Confronting the avalanche of books on the prospects of AI, readers would do well to begin with this one. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter 1 What Is Information? It is always tricky to define fundamental concepts. Since they are the basis for everything that follows, they themselves seem to lack any basis of their own. Physicists have a hard time defining matter and energy, biologists have a hard time defining life, and philosophers have a hard time defining reality. Information is increasingly seen by many philosophers and biologists, and even by some physicists, as the most basic building block of reality, more elementary than matter and energy. No wonder that there are many disputes about how to define information, and how it is related to the evolution of life or to basic ideas in physics such as entropy, the laws of thermodynamics, and the quantum uncertainty principle. This book will make no attempt to resolve--or even explain--these disputes, nor will it offer a universal definition of information applicable to physics, biology, and all other fields of knowledge. Since it is a work of history, which studies the past and future development of human societies, it will focus on the definition and role of information in history. In everyday usage, "information" is associated with human-made symbols like spoken or written words. Consider, for example, the story of Cher Ami and the Lost Battalion. In October 1918, when the American Expeditionary Forces was fighting to liberate northern France from the Germans, a battalion of more than five hundred American soldiers was trapped behind enemy lines. American artillery, which was trying to provide them with cover fire, misidentified their location and dropped the barrage directly on them. The battalion's commander, Major Charles Whittlesey, urgently needed to inform headquarters of his true location, but no runner could break through the German line. According to several accounts, as a last resort Whittlesey turned to Cher Ami, an army carrier pigeon. On a tiny piece of paper, Whittlesey wrote, "We are along the road paralell [sic] 276.4. Our artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. For heaven's sake stop it." The paper was inserted into a canister on Cher Ami's right leg, and the bird was released into the air. One of the battalion's soldiers, Private John Nell, recalled years later, "We knew without a doubt this was our last chance. If that one lonely, scared pigeon failed to find its loft, our fate was sealed." Witnesses later described how Cher Ami flew into heavy German fire. A shell exploded directly below the bird, killing five men and severely injuring the pigeon. A splinter tore through Cher Ami's chest, and his right leg was left hanging by a tendon. But he got through. The wounded pigeon flew the forty kilometers to division headquarters in about forty-five minutes, with the canister containing the crucial message attached to the remnant of his right leg. Though there is some controversy about the exact details, it is clear that the American artillery adjusted its barrage, and an American counterattack rescued the Lost Battalion. Cher Ami was tended by army medics, sent to the United States as a hero, and became the subject of numerous articles, short stories, children's books, poems, and even movies. The pigeon had no idea what information he was conveying, but the symbols inked on the piece of paper he carried helped save hundreds of men from death and captivity. Information, however, does not have to consist of human-made symbols. According to the biblical myth of the Flood, Noah learned that the water had finally receded because the pigeon he sent out from the ark returned with an olive branch in her mouth. Then God set a rainbow in the clouds as a heavenly record of his promise never to flood the earth again. Pigeons, olive branches, and rainbows have since become iconic symbols of peace and tolerance. Objects that are even more remote than rainbows can also be information. For astronomers the shape and movement of galaxies constitute crucial information about the history of the universe. For navigators the North Star indicates which way is north. For astrologers the stars are a cosmic script, conveying information about the future of individual humans and entire societies. Of course, defining something as "information" is a matter of perspective. An astronomer or astrologer might view the Libra constellation as "information," but these distant stars are far more than just a notice board for human observers. There might be an alien civilization up there, totally oblivious to the information we glean from their home and to the stories we tell about it. Similarly, a piece of paper marked with ink splotches can be crucial information for an army unit, or dinner for a family of termites. Any object can be information--or not. This makes it difficult to define what information is. The ambivalence of information has played an important role in the annals of military espionage, when spies needed to communicate information surreptitiously. During World War I, northern France was not the only major battleground. From 1915 to 1918 the British and Ottoman Empires fought for control of the Middle East. After repulsing an Ottoman attack on the Sinai Peninsula and the Suez Canal, the British in turn invaded the Ottoman Empire, but were held at bay until October 1917 by a fortified Ottoman line stretching from Beersheba to Gaza. British attempts to break through were repulsed at the First Battle of Gaza (March 26, 1917) and the Second Battle of Gaza (April 17-19, 1917). Meanwhile, pro-British Jews living in Palestine set up a spy network code-named NILI to inform the British about Ottoman troop movements. One method they developed to communicate with their British operators involved window shutters. Sarah Aaronsohn, a NILI commander, had a house overlooking the Mediterranean. She signaled British ships by closing or opening a particular shutter, according to a predetermined code. Numerous people, including Ottoman soldiers, could obviously see the shutter, but nobody other than NILI agents and their British operators understood it was vital military information. So, when is a shutter just a shutter, and when is it information? The Ottomans eventually caught the NILI spy ring due in part to a strange mishap. In addition to shutters, NILI used carrier pigeons to convey coded messages. On September 3, 1917, one of the pigeons diverted off course and landed in--of all places--the house of an Ottoman officer. The officer found the coded message but couldn't decipher it. Nevertheless, the pigeon itself was crucial information. Its existence indicated to the Ottomans that a spy ring was operating under their noses. As Marshall McLuhan might have put it, the pigeon was the message. NILI agents learned about the capture of the pigeon and immediately killed and buried all the remaining birds they had, because the mere possession of carrier pigeons was now incriminating information. But the massacre of the pigeons did not save NILI. Within a month the spy network was uncovered, several of its members were executed, and Sarah Aaronsohn committed suicide to avoid divulging NILI's secrets under torture. When is a pigeon just a pigeon, and when is it information? Clearly, then, information cannot be defined as specific types of material objects. Any object--a star, a shutter, a pigeon--can be information in the right context. So exactly what context defines such objects as "information"? The naive view of information argues that objects are defined as information in the context of truth seeking. Something is information if people use it to try to discover the truth. This view links the concept of information with the concept of truth and assumes that the main role of information is to represent reality. There is a reality "out there," and information is something that represents that reality and that we can therefore use to learn about reality. For example, the information NILI provided the British was meant to represent the reality of Ottoman troop movements. If the Ottomans massed ten thousand soldiers in Gaza--the centerpiece of their defenses--a piece of paper with symbols representing "ten thousand" and "Gaza" was important information that could help the British win the battle. If, on the other hand, there were actually twenty thousand Ottoman troops in Gaza, that piece of paper did not represent reality accurately, and could lead the British to make a disastrous military mistake. Put another way, the naive view argues that information is an attempt to represent reality, and when this attempt succeeds, we call it truth. While this book takes many issues with the naive view, it agrees that truth is an accurate representation of reality. But this book also holds that most information is not an attempt to represent reality and that what defines information is something entirely different. Most information in human society, and indeed in other biological and physical systems, does not represent anything. I want to spend a little longer on this complex and crucial argument, because it constitutes the theoretical basis of the book. Excerpted from Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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