A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
By Yuval Noah Harari
From renowned historian and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari comes the story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world.
For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse.
Misinformation abounds
And we are rushing headlong into the age of artificial intelligence – a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. If we are so wise, why are we so self-destructive?
NEXUS considers how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age through the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power.
The author explores how different societies and political systems have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.
Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. NEXUS explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and of rediscovering our shared humanity.
About the author
Dr Yuval Noah Harari has a PhD in History from the University of Oxford and now lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specialising in World History. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, published in 2014, has become an international phenomenon and is published in nearly 40 languages worldwide. It was in the Sunday Times bestseller list for over six months in paperback, and was a New York Times top ten bestseller.
- PUBLISHER | Penguin Random House SA |
- ISBN | 9781911717096 |
- Recommended Retail Price | R475.00 |
- Classification | Technology |
