Review: Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

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

It is interesting to read this right after Nate Silver's "On the edge". My guess is we will start reading many more books dealing with AI and its changes to society, governments, business, and everyone's life.

This is written with the usual in-depth historical research typical of Harari, with some repetitions from his old books.

There are some fascinating points, such as how conservative political movements have become untenable with all this change, so they have morphed into radical movements touting revolutionary slogans.

Also some interesting analyses, such as how the Catholic church has been able to change with the times without ever admitting it was wrong (it cannot, since technically it follows God's word), but rather due to "bad actors". I don't know if this holds true, but it's an interesting perspective.


Either way, Harari remains a must-read.



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Review: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book should probably be translated for the US audience. It talks at great length about "Liberalism", which many Americans probably take to mean 'left-leaning', or 'democrat', while it is used in the sense (used outside the US) of Free markets, Democracies, Freedom of speech, etc. To be fair, he addresses this a little ways in, but it would have probably been more clear to just find another term for the US edition.

Once again, Harari's grasp of economics (or lack thereof) sort of annoys me. As an example of how humans may not be needed anymore, not even as consumers, he discusses how a mining company could be providing metals for a robotic company, which in turn produces robots for the same mining company, and so on back and forth. Obviously, if this were the whole sum of the economy then this economy wouldn't survive. It would basically be one giant ponzi scheme of an economy.

Aside from this, however, it was once again an excellent book. As with his others, it is fascinating, and it made me wish I could get everyone else to read it.

Some of my notes:
Democracy has learned, from communism, to take everyone into account. Before it only meant well to-do men from their general area. Example: The Netherlands fought for 3 years not to lose their freedom to the Nazis. As soon as they regained it, however, they fought for 30 years to take this freedom away from Indonesia.
The future will likely be much more similar to Huxley's Brave New World than to Orwell's 1984.
Terrorists are actually very bad at destruction. But they are very good, as the word suggests, at scaring people with as little destruction as possible (highly targeted, maximum impact). Reactions to terrorism often cause more damage and disruption than any attack itself.

I probably could've done without the final section about how he discovered Vipassana yoga, although I understand that's his conclusion to the whole book (more or less), in that we should understand ourselves better, since all the algorithms and bots are going to be understanding us very very well in the near future, and can easily gain an upper hand.

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