Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking 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 AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive?

Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of 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. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history 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, nor is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity.

Professor Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, philosopher, and the bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and the series Sapiens: A Graphic History and Unstoppable Us. He is considered one of the world’s most influential public intellectuals working today. Born in Israel in 1976, Harari received his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 2002 and is currently a lecturer at the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He co-founded the social impact company Sapienship, focused on education and media, with his husband, Itzik Yahav.

ISBN: 9780771019661
Format: Hardback
Pages: 528
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: September 10, 2024

Named a Best New Book to Read in September by the New York Times and iNews

“Yuval Harari has a unique ability to unite both history’s finest details and its grandest megatrends in a single view. In this masterful and provocative new book, he makes a compelling case that information networks are—and always have been—the primary driving force shaping human societies. This deeply important argument comes at a critical time as we all think through the implications of AI and automated content production.”

—Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI

“Tremendous, thought-provoking, and so very well reasoned. Harari gives us a vision of a rapidly approaching future that is at one and the same time thrilling and chilling. If there is one book that I would urge everyone to read—our political, corporate, and cultural leaders most especially—it is Nexus.”

—Stephen Fry