Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI (Random House, 2025 paperback edition)

Their wordsWe are on the verge of ecological collapse, caused by the misuse of our own power.

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Their wordsWe should not assume that delusional networks are doomed to failure. If we want to prevent their triumph, we will have to do the hard work ourselves.

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Their wordsBecause the AI arms race will produce ever more destructive weapons, even a small spark might ignite a cataclysmic conflagration.

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Their wordsLike DNA, stories can create new entities. Indeed, stories can even create an entirely new level of reality.

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Their wordsIn history, power stems only partially from knowing the truth. It also stems from the ability to maintain social order among a large number of people.

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Their wordsHaving a lot of information doesn't in and of itself guarantee either truth or order.

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Their wordsContrary to the naive view, information isn't the raw material of truth, and human information networks aren't geared only to discover the truth. But contrary to the populist view, information isn't just a weapon, either.

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Their wordsBy inventing a new order and imposing it on the world, bureaucracy distorted people's understanding of the world in unique ways.

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Their wordsAll powerful information networks can do both good and ill, depending on how they are designed and used.

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Their wordsHoly books like the Bible and the Quran are an information technology that is meant to both include all the vital information society needs and be free from all possibility of error.

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Their wordsBut while the holy book was seen as the ultimate source of authority, the process of curating the book placed real power in the hands of the curating institution.

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Their wordsThe witch-hunting bureaucracy did what bureaucracy often does: it invented the intersubjective category of “witches” and imposed it on reality.

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Their wordsThe holy book is supposed to be infallible. The self-correcting mechanism embraces fallibility.

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Their wordsScience is a team effort, relying on institutional collaboration rather than on individual scientists or, say, a single infallible book. Of course, institutions too are prone to error. Scientific institutions are nevertheless different from religious institutions, inasmuch as they reward skepticism and innovation rather than conformity.

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Their wordsSelf-correcting mechanisms are ubiquitous in nature. Children learn how to walk thanks to them.

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Their wordsCrucially, scientific institutions are willing to admit their institutional responsibility for major mistakes and crimes.

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Their wordsTechnical difficulties often prevent dictators from becoming totalitarian.

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Their wordsElections are a central part of the democratic tool kit, but they are not democracy.

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Their wordsUnlike parliaments, departments of environmental studies should not reflect the will of the majority.

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Their wordsHolding a conversation presupposes the existence of several legitimate voices. If, however, the people has only one legitimate voice, there can be no conversation.

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Their wordsDemocracy and dictatorship aren't binary opposites, but rather are on a continuum.

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Their wordsThe biggest advantage of the centralized totalitarian network is that it is extremely orderly, which means it can make decisions quickly and enforce them ruthlessly.

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Their wordsBut we may gradually be pushed to the sidelines, and ultimately it might even be possible for the network to operate without us.

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Their wordsDemocracy is a conversation, and conversations rely on language. By hacking language, computers could make it extremely difficult for large numbers of humans to conduct a meaningful public conversation.

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Their wordsThe danger this poses is very different from that imagined by most science fiction, which has largely focused on the physical threats posed by intelligent machines.

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Their wordsThese self-correcting mechanisms are costly, but if you want to get the truth, you must invest in them. Silicon Valley thought it was exempt from this historical rule.

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Their wordsOne reason why the alignment problem is particularly dangerous in the context of the computer network is that this network is likely to become far more powerful than any previous human bureaucracy.

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Their wordsThe alignment problem turns out to be, at heart, a problem of mythology.

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Their wordsTo guard against a plethora of unforeseeable problems, our best bet is to create living institutions that can identify and respond to the threats as they arise.

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Their wordsA democratic society should never allow all its information to be concentrated in one place, no matter whether that hub is the government or a private corporation.

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Their wordsAs each regime chooses its own answer to the AI alignment problem, to the dictator's dilemma, and to other technological quandaries, each might create a separate and very different computer network.

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