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

I couldn't put this book down - it’s both fascinating and deeply relevant to today’s world. The ideas it explores played a key role in shaping how we built Rhome, while also making it even clearer how current social media platforms have failed us. A few of my high-level takeaways: 1. Information is often used to create order rather than discover truth 2. Labels are incredibly dangerous as they become the reality. They impose order, not discover truth. 3. Much of what we consider natural and eternal are actually man made and mutable 4. Intersubjective realities (realities that only exist because we believe they do) were the basis for all achievements of human civilization, but they occasionally led to crusades, jihads, and witch hunts. Inter-computer realities will be influential for future civilizations. They too can launch their own witch hunts, regardless of the fact that they use data and mathematics. They can be far more catastrophic too because of the power and intelligence they wield. 5. We must put away ideas of infallibility and work hard to build information networks with strong self-correcting mechanisms