https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7511223557

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Prof Hararri is one of the world’s most influential public intellectuals. He looks at the history of human societies from their beginning through the lens of information networks. He tracks the competition between democracy and totalitarianism. Just as we most need it, he updates the principles of democracy for the computer age [see the last half of this review].

I summarize his argument here by selecting quotations from the book and adding my own glue to connect them. I highly recommend reading the book for a better exposition and deeper argument.

“For most of history, large-scale democracy was impossible because information technology wasn’t sophisticated enough to hold a large-scale political conversation.” Large-scale totalitarianism was similarly impossible. However, “The invention of new information technology is always a catalyst for major historical changes.” Inventing clay tablets to keep information such as tax records “helped forged the first city-states.”

Next, the printing press revolutionized the distribution of information. This allowed democracies to exist over much larger areas, and helped forge the industrial and scientific revolutions. It helped totalitarians control much larger areas as their commands could be widely distributed.

Perhaps surprisingly, it helped conspiracy theories blossom and spread to horrible effect — e.g., witch hunts and trials killed tens of thousands of innocent people in Western Europe over the first 2+ centuries after the printing press was invented.

Currently, social media and computer bots have made the information and disinformation travel almost instantly. They also make false information easier to generate. Our online discussions are full of alien agents (bots), so we often don’t know if we are interacting with a computer or a person.

“Now, ironically, democracy may prove impossible because information technology is becoming too sophisticated. If unfathomable algorithms take over the conversation, and particularly if they quash reasoned arguments and stoke hate and confusion, public discussion cannot be maintained. Yet, if democracies do collapse, it will likely result not from some kind of technological inevitability, but from a human failure to regulate the new technology wisely.”

** Harari On Social Media algorithms for maximizing engagement:

“The fact that lies and hate tend to be psychologically and socially destructive, whereas truth, compassion, and sleep are essential for human welfare, was completely lost on the algorithms. Based on this very narrow understanding of humanity, the algorithms helped to create a new social system that encouraged our basest instincts while discouraging us from realizing the full spectrum of the human potential….

As the harmful effects were becoming manifest, the tech giants were repeatedly warned about what was happening, but they failed to step in … as the platforms were overrun by falsehoods and outrage.

As we have seen again and again throughout history, in a completely free information fight, truth tends to lose. To tilt the balance in favor of truth, networks must develop and maintain strong, self-correcting mechanisms that reward truth telling.

** Principles Of Democracy (updated for AI and Social Media):
[The rest of this review is all quotations from Chapter 9 Democracies:]

“These principles have been known for centuries, even millennia. Citizens should demand that they be applied to the new realities of the computer age.

1- The first principle is benevolence. When a computer network collects information on me, that information should be used to help me rather than manipulate me. This principle has already been successfully enshrined by numerous traditional bureaucratic systems, such as healthcare.… [also] the information that our lawyer or accountant or a therapist accumulates. Having access to our personal life comes with a fiduciary duty to act in our best interest. If the tech giants cannot square their fiduciary duty with their current business model, legislators could require them to switch to a more traditional business model, of getting users to pay for services with money rather than information.

2- The second principle that would protect democracy against the rise of a totalitarian surveillance regime is decentralization. A democratic society should never allow all its information to be concentrated in one place, no matter whether that hub is a government or a private corporation.… For the survival of democracy, some inefficiency is a feature, not a bug. To protect the privacy and liberty of individuals, it’s best if neither the police nor the boss knows everything about us.

3- A third Democratic principal is mutuality. If democracies increase surveillance of individuals, they must simultaneously increase surveillance of government and corporations too. Democracy requires balance. Governments and corporations often develop apps and algorithms as tools for top-down surveillance, but algorithms can just as easily become powerful tools for bottom-up transparency, and accountability, exposing bribery and tax evasion. If they know more about us while we simultaneously know more about them, the balance is kept.

4- A fourth democratic principle is that surveillance systems must always leave room for both change and rest. In human history, oppression can take the form of either denying humans the ability to change or denying them the opportunity to rest. … Democratic societies that employ powerful surveillance technology, therefore need to be aware of the extremes… History is full of rigid caste systems that denied humans the ability to change, but it is also full of dictators who tried to mold humans like clay [DEW: think of totalitarian social-credit scoring that scores even your leisure time in a government database]. Finding the middle path between these two extremes is a never-ending task.”

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