Book Review

 Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI.  Yuval Noah Harari. (Random House Publishing, New York, 2024.) 

Nexus, by Yuval Noah Harari is a book that encapsulates the history of information networks that are used throughout the history of humanity, and the relationship between those networks and the people that created them.  Harari’s book is a well written combination of historical narrative and philosophical perspective, which expounds arguments in both support of and opposition to, artificial intelligence.  Harari creates a philosophical background, generates a narrative about the history of information networks, and makes arguments for how these networks have affected humanity.  

Harari’s nascent features of his book elaborate the differences between humans and other animals.  The author concludes that the major difference is the ability for humans to tell stories and then creates distinctions of how people interact with those stories.  Harari asserts that there are objective realities.  Objective realities are described as things that can be objectively observed through empirical evidence, such as a table made of wood or a can of peas.  He then describes subjective realities, which he presented as things that have a relationship that can differ from individual, such as pain or love.  He concluded with the concept of intersubjective realities, which include things like political boundaries or legal systems.   These intersubjective realities are the basis for story telling in both a fictional and nonfictional sense. 

Harari prefaces the historical portion of his book with interpretations of how people view information.  He describes what he calls the naive or populist viewpoint of how information is transmitted and what it could mean for the people using information.  He asserts that information does not necessarily mean truth or power, but that the information must be verified as true and used for a purpose that is justified.  He uses the example of Nazi eugenics information as information that was not actually true, but it still was present existentially speaking.  Over the long-term course of history, Nazi genetics never really granted them the power to overcome the inherent weaknesses of fascism.  He argues that the old aphorism, “knowledge is power,” is the populist or naive view of information networks. 

Yuval Harari then continues his narrative to follow the history of information chains as they existed in a chronological fashion.   He begins with human to story and story-to-story chains, which involve what is considered word-of-mouth in which a story can spread without any direct knowledge of it happening to the people telling it.  He explains the challenges related to this system as they are subject to fallacy, personal flair, or any number of other factors in which the story may change over a temporal or geographic factors.  He then continues to describe the concept of human to document chains. 

Human to document chains consist of the ability for the written word to expand the telling of stories.  In the chapter, “The Paper Tiger,” Harari weighs on the value of documented lists.  He cites an example of how an older relative of his had his citizenship invalidated due to weaknesses in the Ukrainian bureaucracy.  Simply because one has a list or census of information does not make it true, nor does it necessarily empower those that are using the list.  Harari applies a significant amount of scrutiny to bureaucracies and their need to categorize, even in the face of erroneous information.  His opinion is critical, yet he provides examples of how cataloguing information can be of good value, such as in Cholera outbreaks being linked to the water supply in urban areas. 

Harari continues to describe document to document chains, which he describes as the process of persons interpreting documents and in turn producing new documents.  He cited examples of religious scholars interpreting religious texts and then providing their viewpoints for future scholars to debate over.  In the context of historical studies, this is called the historiography.  Harari noted one of the most pivotal machines in the narrative of documents was the printing press.  The ability for mass documents to be printed and distributed.  Of course, like virtually everything that Harari discusses, he points out the double-edged sword inherent with such an invention.  The possibility of dissemination of untrue information for the purpose of harm, such as the “Protocols of Elder Zion.”  This was a text that was printed feloniously as an attempt to create a false narrative of the Jewish people.  The claims were egregious. 

    Harari’s narrative then dissected the key differences between democracies and totalitarian states.  He noted that democracies were functional because of the presence of truth and fairness within the society.   Totalitarianism was the absence of individual liberty, truth, and was rife with injustice.  He attributes the key difference between those two forms of governance by the presence of what he calls “self-correcting mechanisms.”  These mechanisms are supposed to fix any injustice and bring truth where it might have otherwise been concealed.  He cites the United States' effective self-correcting mechanism that can be understood as the function of the press during the Watergate scandal.  The ability for the United States to be able to shine a light and bring down the supreme executive suggests that the system can right itself when it gets overpowered.  Harari argues that tyrannical governments lack these self-correcting mechanisms and that no oversight can be placed on injustice.  He uses the colloquial term of “strong man” governments to describe them.    

    While Harari’s viewpoint on democracies and tyrannies has a great deal of power, I found that it lacked some substantive qualities.  The main objection was that view of government was a bit parochial and forced a dichotomization of how power was shared.  Harari emphasized the importance of self-correcting mechanisms yet there were many lacking details.  For example, he applauded triumph of the thirteenth amendment as a victory of the self-correcting mechanism over the peculiar institution of slavery.  This distracts the reader from two major points.  Firstly, the institution of slavery was in existence for a long period of time, suggesting that the speed at which these mechanisms move is uncertain.  Secondly, given the language of the amendment which allows for slavery as a “punishment for a crime,” ignores the hideous realities of black codes.  The institution of slavery was merely relocated from private to public domain. 

    Harari continued his narrative to describe the inception of mass media and the role it played in pushing the information revolution into the future.  He argued that mass media made both mass democracy possible and mass tyranny possible.  With the ability to spread messages of both truth and propaganda, the responsibility fell on the leaders of governments (be they democracy or strong man) to proliferate information that the public were required to know. 

    The narrative continued from the mass media of yesterday to the social media of today.  Harari warned of the dangers of pushing information too quickly and without restriction.  One instance of the dangers of such information machines was the outbreak of a pogrom in Myanmar due to the algorithms used by Facebook.  The algorithms wanted to “maximize user interface,” which prioritized hate speech of the dominant hegemony in a predominantly Buddhist society.   The hate speech and rantings of persons or groups that incited violence against the Muslim minority were pushed to the top of people’s feed because it drew in interest.  According to the example, outrage and hate was exactly what “maximized user interface.”  This shows some of the inherent dangers with such information networks.  Most people in the United States at the time this book was released (2024) can view that type of example as commonplace. 

    Harari’s primary warning was the presence of the algorithm and the danger that it imposes on the people it was intended to help.   He cited an example of the COMPAS algorithm that has been used by judges to determine the likelihood of recidivism, which by all accounts is frighteningly unfair.  How many other aspects of people’s lives are dictated by some kind of algorithm or artificial intelligence program.  The overabundance of these tools may diminish the interest people have in making up their own minds and deciding for themselves what they want.  It could be the case that even the course of war is pushed onto an AI system for the supposedly best outcome.   

    Harari continues to describe network to network chains of information in which information is passed from one network to another without the presence of human influence.  This demonstrates the possibility of AIs to work or compete and cause all manner of complication to people trying to interpret what is going on.  Harari even cited an example of computers conversing using a cypher system in which two computers spoke to each other in code and a third computer tried to discern what the conversation was about.  The third computer was apparently unable to break the code.  This all suggests the growing and encroaching power of the artificial intelligence and algorithm. 

    Harari admits that convenience and helpful boons can come from AI, but that the use of it in our lives needs to be far more carefully regulated and with the self-correcting mechanisms that he emphasizes.  The artificial intelligence could even form its own network to network chains of information that could cut people out of the loop and generate an artificial narrative of what is going on in the world.  People may be acting on false information that was the product of information exchange of one AI to another.  It might not be some planned machine Apocalypse, but rather the product of machines and people miscommunicating.  

    Yuval Harari does make one point that I found to be a bit irritating.  He argues that AI, algorithms, and other artificial means of silencing voices may be used to remove unpopular opinions or unpleasant voices.   While doing so, he expounded on the need for people to support US involvement in the Ukraine conflict in defense of Ukrainian nationalism.  He asserted that only “professional” historians would be in support of action against Russia.  Using a major book label, he is effectively hammering those voices which are not as well-known as him, while claiming that AI in danger of doing the same thing.  Is it the case that AI is doing what we already do, or is he afraid that people should do the same thing? 

    Personally, I did not feel a strong need for the United States to intervene in the Ukraine because I do not support Ukranian nationalism, nor do I have a particularly strong opposition to Russian imperialism.  While Imperialism is extremely unpopular these days, the notion that every person or group intrinsically deserves its own country is an intersubjective reality that is possible of changing.   I also have no certain idea what sort of agreements those two countries have remaining from the Warsaw Pact, and what they both got themselves into. 

    Overall, I found Nexus to be a book worthy of people’s time and consideration.  There are several descriptive claims about how humans network information that could give insight to the reader and grant them a more expanded view of how humanity is proceeding into the future.  While Harari warns of the dangers of AI more than once, it is certainly on the reader to determine whether that warning is worth heeding.  The historical examples are interesting, Harari’s personal opinions are tempered, and there is sense of greater consciousness gained.  I would recommend this book to anyone who is of fair intellectual prowess and has the time to consider the world we are all approaching.