3.6 KiB
title, category, image, rating, tags, description, link
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| Nexus | Books | /img/nexus.jpg | 5.0 |
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On the history of information up until the times of AI. |
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Why I love this book
Contents
PROLOGUE xi
PART I: Human Networks
CHAPTER 1: What Is Information? 3
CHAPTER 2: Stories: Unlimited Connections 18
CHAPTER 3: Documents: The Bite of the Paper Tigers 40
CHAPTER 4: Errors: The Fantasy of Infallibility 70
CHAPTER 5: Decisions: A Brief History of Democracy and Totalitarianism 118
PART II: The Inorganic Network
CHAPTER 6: The New Members: How Computers Arc Different from Printing Presses 193
CHAPTER 7: Relentless: The Network Is Always On 230
CHAPTER 8: Fallible: The Network Is Often Wrong 256
PART III: Computer Politics
CHAPTER 9. Democracies: Can We Still Hold a Conversation? 305
CHAPTER 10: Totalitarianism: All Power to the Algorithms? 348
CHAPTER 11: The Silicon Curtain: Global Empire or Global Split? 361
EPILOGUE 395
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 405
NOTES 409
INDEX 477
P.98 The witch-hunting bureaucracy did what bureaucracy often does: it invented the inter- subjective category of 'witches' and imposed it on reality. It even printed forms, with standard accusations and confessions of witches and blank spaces left for dates, names and the signature of the accused.
P.104 Scientific institutions are also different from conspiracy theories, inasmuch as they reward self-scepticism. Conspiracy theorists tend to be extremely sceptical regarding the existing consensus, but when it comes to their own beliefs, they lose all their scepticism and fall prey to confirmation bias.
P136 Democracies die not only when people are not free to talk but also when people are not willing or able to listen.
P144 But prior to the development of modern infor mation technology, there are no examples of large-scale democracies anywhere.
P201 Allegedly, I and others like me anthropomorphise computers and imagine that they are conscious beings that have thoughts and feelings. In truth, however, computers are dumb ma- chines that don't think or feel anything, and therefore cannot make any decisions or create any ideas on their own.
This objection assumes that making decisions and creating ideas are predicated on having consciousness. Yet this is a fundamental misunderstanding that results from a much more widespread confu- sion between intelligence and consciousness. I have discussed this subject in previous books, but a short recap is unavoidable. People often confuse intelligence with consciousness, and many conse- quently jump to the conclusion that non-conscious entities cannot be intelligent. But intelligence and consciousness are very different. Intelligence is the ability to attain goals, such as maximising user engagement on a social media platform. Consciousness is the ability to experience subjective feelings like pain, pleasure, love and hate. In humans and other mammals, intelligence often goes hand in hand with consciousness. Facebook executives and engineers rely on their feelings in order to make decisions, solve problems and attain their goals.
P219 The main message of the previous chapters has been that information isn't truth and that information revolutions don't uncover the truth. They create new political structures, economic models and cultural norms. Since the current information revolution is more momentous than any previ- ous information revolution, it is likely to create unprecedented real- ities on an unprecedented scale
Meghan O'Gieblyn
P305 Civilisations are born from the marriage of bureaucracy and mythology.