Similar to his Sapiens, this book feels like a collection of historical facts and observations that are mostly easy to agree with, while lacking any truly novel thesis or groundbreaking insight. To be fair, my perspective is likely biased: As you may know, I have been delivering a lecture titled "Ethics & Emerging Technologies," for many years now, which covers the same grounds Harari treads here. Because I regularly read/watch/absorb material to incorporate into that talk, I found myself intimately familiar with a lot of material found in the book. But if you haven't looked into these areas closely, this is an easy read. Material & prose are very accessible, with nothing too complex to grok.
The book is structured into three parts. The first section defines human networks, exploring how information was gathered and shared over past millennia. Harari repeatedly draws a contrast between religious scriptures and foundational legal texts like the US Constitution. While both are human constructs, religious texts are traditionally framed as infallible. Conversely, a constitution is living prose that can be amended as societal morals evolve, a prime example being how both the Bible and the original US Constitution treated slavery.
The second part, titled "The Inorganic Network," shifts the focus to computer networks. Harari emphasizes that because these networks are "always on" and frequently propagate misinformation, they require robust, built-in self-correcting mechanisms, that are currently missing. The final section, "Computer Politics," dives into algorithmic bias, facial recognition surveillance, and the tech-driven US-China rivalry, topics that dominate our daily headlines these days.
The book is peppered with amusing historical tidbits. For instance, Copernicus’s seminal 1543 work, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, failed to sell out its initial print run of just 400 copies, earning it the historical title of a "worst-seller." Similarly, the discussion of how the Bible was canonized, and how the initial formation of the Torah subsequently required the Mishnah, which later demanded the interpretations of the Talmud, was equally amusing. However, some other broader contrarian claims feel like a stretch. One such example is the assertion that the invention of the printing press wasn't entirely a net positive because it accelerated the spread of early "fake news" (like witch-hunt manuals). Thought this is an overengineered attempt to offer a provocative counter-narrative.
That said, the dilemmas raised in the final chapters are deeply concerning. Harari highlights COMPAS, a proprietary software sold to the US justice system that judges use to predict recidivism and determine prison sentencing. While the company selling the software claims it standardizes punishments, the underlying algorithm remains a black box protected as a trade secret. If the algorithm errs and recommends a ten-year sentence instead of one, the defendant has no data on which to base an appeal. This is just one example. This lack of transparency is a pervasive existential threat in the AI era. Even if we legislate "explainable AI," that Intel Corp and other companies were promoting, the sheer volume of data and the complexity of neural networks mean that human beings may soon lose the ability to untangle the decision-making trail. He also talks about how competing interests & nations (e.g. US Vs. China Vs. Europe) may render the idea of "web" irrelevant leading us towards "cocoons" instead, where different networks & systems become siloed, refusing to interwork.
Ultimately, since these ideas are not that new, not a lot of fresh learnings for me. But this could be a good book for those who are not well versed in these topics and are looking to understand how the information networks evolved over the centuries and are getting shaped now by algorithms that require close attention to ensure they don't blow up the societies.
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