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Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
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About This Book
From the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world. For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive? Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence. Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity.
Reviews
"Almost identical to Sapiens in content, only with the bits about prehistoric man truncated and the generic AI jeremiad padded out."
"But, at its best, his book summarizes the current state of affairs with a memorable clarity ..."
"Much of it leaves a sour taste ..."
"Has some curious blind spots; it's odd, in a critique of a technology driven largely by profit-seeking corporations, that capitalism is hardly mentioned at all."
"Indeed, it is Harari's genius to untangle complex patterns to reveal complicated structures while illuminating the connections to our everyday lives."
"Confronting the avalanche of books on the prospects of AI, readers would do well to begin with this one."
"His grimmest work yet ..."
"Builds, of course, on Harari's string of tremendous successes, and it surely is a reflection of this success that the latest offering has the air of a big-budget production with several hands contributing to its manufacture ..."
"Nexus...contains many too-brief but fascinating discussions on subjects ..."
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