Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI Paperback – 10 September 2024

It will keep you hooked, Yuval has taken us beautifully through the history and power of information and the future of information. He makes you think about how our world and society works, and how it might look in the future if we are not careful.

“Nexus” by Yuval Noah Harari is a superb book, and it is the first book of his that I have thoroughly enjoyed. In a world where algorithms play an outsized role in influencing our communication, thoughts, moods, and opinions, this book offers a timely history of communication networks and how they have grown and influenced human thought.Yuval divided his book into ‘human networks,’ ‘the inorganic network,’ and ‘computer politics.’ He makes a crucial point that many authors miss when they write about the importance of the Gutenberg press in spreading ideas. Tools like the Gutenberg press enable information networks, and people use or misuse these tools to create and build information networks.Throughout the book, Yuval emphasizes that information is not knowledge or wisdom, which we forget in our so-called ‘information age.’The first section ends with a brief chapter on democracy and totalitarianism. In an ideal situation, democracy contains self-correcting mechanisms. However, Yuval did not analyze how democracies are often failing today. The author distinguishes between authoritarianism and totalitarianism, creating the perfect platform for launching the next section, ‘The Inorganic Network.’The second section comprises three chapters: distinguishing between computers and the printing press, emphasizing how the network is always on, always hungry for data, and how it is often wrong. The networked world we live in today is always wide awake, roving the world with open eyes. However, since they use past behavior to make predictions and rely on data, these networks often make more errors than we realize. However, these errors are costly, as Yuval explains in the book.Yuval dedicates the last section to computer politics and how these networks play out in the democratic and totalitarian worlds. In my opinion, he is too optimistic about democratic societies. While democracies ought to have self-correcting mechanisms, recent crackdowns on pro-Palestinian supporters do not augur well for democracies. Yuval makes a critical point: voting mechanisms do not create democracies. The inorganic networks play different roles in totalitarian regimes. Yuval raises essential points about democracies and the continued failure to hold conversations.Ultimately, will the world get divided into those who control information networks, those who use them, or those who allow the information networks to use them?This book is excellent, his best to date, and will give you much food for thought.

The book by Yuval Noah Harare . In general his previous book like sapiens, 21 lessons to 2- century are too good . Induce to read continuously. This book is good but in this subject AI more books are in market . Gives more specific input on AI . Readable since my scale on the author is 80% and above . This is~ 70-75 %

Great storytelling, even a naive mind can comprehend the message.Contemporary examples gives it a perspective to understand better.

It is an excellent history of Human development in terms of information and how it evolved. Every new technology came with its own upside and downside and based on the type of government-democracy, autocracy, dictatorship, totalitarian etc. How each of them used information as a tool to bring about order or total submission. How more information does not automatically lead to truth or facts. And finally how AI can transform the entire landscape and how the human species may not be able to stand an AI onslaught and how AI is different from all the earlier information technology tools and inventions. Examples and illustrations from history are very well selected and told in a very interesting way. The author is a gripping story teller and brings to life historical events in a very relevant manner. I wish he could have gone a little more into various ways to control and use AI for the betterment of mankind, even though it is not his subject matter.

A fantastic book describing the future of AI .Explained in a detailed way starting from human evolution , algorithm,and AI agents.reallu a worth reading to understand about AI .This book puth forth lot of questions to the sapiens on how we are going to face this AI evolution.

Looks like old book..kindly mention it in the product description..but the print is perfect.

Must read after first and second part.