Networks and Power: Harari Explores the History of Information Networks

Robert Buntrock reviews a new book on the history of information

Posted on April 21, 2025 in Featured Reviews

As a part of our efforts to support scholarly work on the ethical and creative usage of technology in libraries and higher education, Choice highlights new and upcoming titles on this urgent topic through long-form reviews. In doing so, we hope to emphasize the importance of these issues and promising resources for addressing them. The following review, written by Robert E. Buntrock, considers Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI (Random House, 2024) by Yuval Noah Harari and also appears in the July 2025 issue of Choice and online. We hope these reviews will introduce new titles to our audience for their personal or institutional collections.

---

By Robert E. Buntrock

Harari, Yuval Noah. Nexus: a brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to AI. Random House, 2024. 528p bibl index ISBN 9780593734223, $35.00; ISBN 9798217077618 pbk, contact publisher for price; ISBN 9780593734247 ebook, contact publisher for price.

At first glance, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI seems aimed at a small audience of librarians and information specialists. However, it’s important that this book be read by a much broader audience concerned with history, technical information, networks, public information, politics, psychology, and even philosophy and theology. Yuval Noah Harari (history, Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem, Israel) addresses the way we accept and assimilate the mountains of information (and disinformation) accessible to us, what or whom we trust, and our capacity for critical thought.

As Dennis Duncan notes in his review in The New York Times, Nexus is actually two books in one. As Harari lays out in the twenty-page prologue, which serves as an abstract for the book, the first three chapters describe information, documents, and networks, and the succeeding eight chapters discuss the use of these resources, infallibility, democracies, totalitarianism, and finally the “Silicon Curtain.”

---

🔥 Stay up-to-date with LibTech Insights by signing up for our free newsletter. Just one weekly email with our new blog posts, top tech news stories, and other bonus content. Check out some posts from our archive:

• Creating an Interactive Digital Collection with an AI Chatbot
• How to Interview Your Library’s Patrons
• Web Archiving Made Easy: Saving a Website Snapshot with Zotero

---

Over 100,000 years, Homo sapiens has acquired power through discoveries, inventions, and conquest, but power does not lead to wisdom. Information is assimilated both as individuals and as groups, which leads to networks. Harari compares classical fables describing failed strivings for wisdom to more modern history, when at least two totalitarian powers failed in their attempts. We may be witnessing increased attempts by Populists to further their power via information.

The naïve view of information is that it leads to truth, which leads to both wisdom and power. So what is truth? The prime principle of logic states that valid conclusions can only be drawn from valid premises. Therefore, valid truth comes from valid information. However, the exploding plethora of information, with increasing availability of access, also proliferates invalid data and information. Practitioners even term the output “alternative truth,” denying objective truth and arguing that truth is held only by the individual. Actually, this perversion of information leads to ignorance. As Orwell stated, ignorance is strength, and it is the source of power that politicians and autocrats use to justify their actions and philosophies.

Modern Populist seekers and wielders of power (Harari names Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil) expand their use of power. Power becomes their only reality, and information—their information—becomes a weapon. One branch of Populism acknowledges truth from revelation, religious or otherwise. Scientific research has become labeled as not seeking objective truth, but as using power to determine what is truth in the service of elites. This is the philosophy of Populist power.

In part 1, “Human Networks,” chapter 1 asks and answers, “What Is Information?” There are many definitions, leading to the repeated question, “What Is Truth?” Other sections include “What Information Does” and “Information in Human History.” The Bible figures prominently in the discussion, but the main answer is connectivity, which has formed throughout human history. To quote Harari (p xxx), “History isn’t the study of the past, it is the study of change … what remains the same, what changes, and how things change.” “How well does information represent reality?” and “Is it true or false?” are important questions. Equally important are “How well does it connect people?” and “What networks are created?”

Connections between information are best told through stories, which are the subject of chapter 2. Harari describes Biblical and Marxist philosophies and Nazism. Germans had a choice for betterment in the 1930s and chose the wrong path, whereas the subsequent liberal democracy did lead to improvement in their lives. Information can yield both truth and order, truth can yield wisdom, and both truth and order can yield power.

Chapter 3, “Documents,” describes the evolution of stories and lists (of data) into information. Stories are more easily grasped than boring but necessary data. Documents appeared as early as four millennia ago. Within 300 years, new problems arose with archiving and retrieving documents. Documents began to replace biological memory. Organizations and bureaucracy were developed to help with retrieval, but they produced their own set of problems. However, they try to maintain order.

Chapter 4 describes the fantasy of infallibility by discussing Bible codification, which led to perceived enemies, like witches and heretics. These abuses led to the discovery of ignorance and self-correction, which don’t always work. Chapter 5 discusses decisions, democracy and totalitarianism, and their evolved histories.

Part 2, “The Inorganic Network,” covers the use of computers in creating and maintaining networks. Chapter 6 discusses how computers differ from printing presses, how humans serve as connectors between documents, and how computers, which are prone to hacking, have replaced networks. Chapter 7, “Relentless: The Network is Always On,” discusses the omnipresence of digital networks resulting in surveillance, spying, security, and privacy. Chapter 8, “Fallible: The Network is Often Wrong,” discusses nonhuman intelligence, quantifying suffering, computer mythologies and bias, and the introduction of artificial intelligence.

In part 3, “Computer Politics,” chapter 9 covers democracies and conversations, self-correction, consequences of actions, and regulation of systems. Chapter 10, “Totalitarianism: All Power to the Algorithms?,” discusses AI, data floods, and monopolies. Chapter 12 is titled “The Silicon Curtain: Global Empire or Global Split.” Analogous to the divisions created by the Iron Curtain in the 1940s, a new “Silicon Curtain” may separate us all via opaque algorithms from digital and political overlords. Chapter 12 further examines dependence on AI, code wars, and hot wars.

In the epilogue, Harari discusses his take on the history, evolution, and uses of AI and networks and his hope for control, good decisions, and wise uses for these programs.

This quality publication is timely, considering the current state of politics and information, domestic and global. Recommended to all those interested in STEM, history, information, computing, AI, politics, psychology, philosophy, theology, and journalism as well as general audiences.

Summing up: Recommended. General readers through faculty.

Subject: Science & Technology – Information & Computer Science

---

Robert E. Buntrock, Ph.D. in chemistry, is a former laboratory chemist with five decades of subsequent experience as an information specialist for Amoco Corp. and in private practice. He has reviewed more than 200 books for several venues, including Choice.

Related Posts