One of our favorite books published this year is Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari.
Like the previous bestseller, Sapiens, the book has an engaging presentation of history, this time in the context of AI and information networks, which were key to all leaps in society’s evolution.
The book examines that despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we are now in an existential crisis. The world is facing ecological and economic challenges. Misinformation is at all-time highs. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI - a new information network that threatens to annihilate us.
Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped humankind and the 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.
The book explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. The witchhunts were enabled by the printing press, totalitarian regimes were made possible by mass media, and today, fake news is made possible by social networks.
Yuval also addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our 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.
Whether you’re a fan of history or not, this book is an excellent read, both in written and audio formats.