nexus
The best aspect of "Nexus" according to online reviewers is its thought-provoking exploration of complex themes that challenge readers to understand the world in new ways. Many praise its engaging narrative and depth of insight into societal issues. Conversely, the worst criticism centers around its pacing, with some reviewers noting that certain sections feel drawn out or convoluted, which may detract from the overall reading experience.
Kindle Highlights: Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
Highlights
information sometimes represents reality, and sometimes doesn’t. But it always connects. This is its fundamental characteristic. Therefore, when examining the role of information in history, — location: 693 ^ref-26504
“How well does it connect people? What new network does it create?” — location: 695 ^ref-27379
This is why the naive view is wrong to believe that creating more powerful information technology will necessarily result in a more truthful understanding of the world. If no additional steps are taken to tilt the balance in favor of truth, an increase in the amount and speed of information is likely to swamp the relatively rare and expensive truthful accounts by much more common and cheap types of information. — location: 699 ^ref-26170
When it comes to uniting people, fiction enjoys two inherent advantages over the truth. First, fiction can be made as simple as we like, whereas the truth tends to be complicated, because the reality it is supposed to represent is complicated. Take, for example, the truth about nations. It is difficult to grasp that the nation to which one belongs is an intersubjective entity that exists only in our collective imagination. You rarely hear politicians say such things in their political speeches. It is far easier to believe that our nation is God’s chosen people, entrusted by the Creator with some special mission. This simple story has been repeatedly told by countless politicians from Israel to Iran and from the United States to Russia. Second, the truth is often painful and disturbing, and if we try to make it more comforting and flattering, it will no longer be the truth. In contrast, fiction is highly malleable. The history of every nation contains some dark episodes that citizens don’t like to acknowledge and remember. An Israeli politician who in her election speeches details the miseries inflicted on Palestinian civilians by the Israeli occupation is unlikely to get many votes. In contrast, a politician who builds a national myth by ignoring uncomfortable facts, focusing on glorious moments in the Jewish past, and embellishing reality wherever necessary may well sweep to power. That’s the case not just in Israel but in all countries. How many Italians or Indians want to hear the unblemished truth about their nations? An uncompromising adherence to the truth is essential for scientific progress, and it is also an admirable spiritual practice, but it is not a winning political strategy. — location: 969 ^ref-44580
Telling a fictional story is lying only when you pretend that the story is a true representation of reality. Telling a fictional story isn’t lying when you avoid such pretense and acknowledge that you are trying to create a new intersubjective reality rather than represent a preexisting objective reality. — location: 989 ^ref-25324
For the scientific revolution to gather pace, scientists had to trust information published by colleagues in distant lands. — location: 2126 ^ref-29311
unlike the Catholic Church, the Académie des Sciences did not command huge territories and budgets. But scientific institutions did accrue influence thanks to a very original claim to trust. A church typically told people to trust it because it possessed the absolute truth, in the form of an infallible holy book. A scientific institution, in contrast, gained authority because it had strong self-correcting mechanisms that exposed and rectified the errors of the institution itself. It was these self-correcting mechanisms, not the technology of printing, that were the engine of the scientific revolution. In other words, the scientific revolution was launched by the discovery of ignorance.[91] — location: 2135 ^ref-3244