“Reflexivity is, in effect, a two-way feedback mechanism in which reality helps shape the participants’ thinking and the participants’ thinking helps shape reality.’’ - George Soros.
Which is most important, powerful - networks or hierarchy?
How can one man, George Soros, ‘break the Bank of England’ and the entire British government helpless to stop him?
Ferguson’s book is a masterful analysis (synthesis) of this very question. The answer derives from understanding the difference between - the distributed strength of networks (Soros) vs the concentrated power of organizations (government).
Great!
“It tells the story of the interaction between networks and hierarchies from ancient times until the very recent past. It brings together theoretical insights from myriad disciplines, ranging from economics to sociology, from neuroscience to organizational behaviour.’’
As he says, Ferguson covers a lot of stuff. Easy to follow, but reader (listener) needs serious commitment. Detailed and historical. Comprehensive and profound.
“Its central thesis is that social networks have always been much more important in history than most historians, fixated as they have been on hierarchical organizations such as states, have allowed –but never more so than in two periods. The first ‘networked era’ followed the introduction of the printing press to Europe in the late fifteenth century and lasted until the end of the eighteenth century. The second –our own time –dates from the 1970s, though I argue that the technological revolution we associate with Silicon Valley was more a consequence than a cause of a crisis of hierarchical institutions.’’
Ferguson willing to think against the grain. Confident but not arrogant, offers reasons along with conclusions.
“The intervening period, from the late 1790s until the late 1960s, saw the opposite trend: hierarchical institutions re-established their control and successfully shut down or co-opted networks. The zenith of hierarchically organized power was in fact the mid-twentieth century –the era of totalitarian regimes and total war.’’ (xxv)
Make no mistake, this is no dry, technical, theoretical history lesson. This presents real life, with real people. Ella Fitzgerald, Mark Zukerberg, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Nathan Rothschild, Frederic Hayek, Ben Bernanke, Julian Assange, Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela, etc., etc., are all here!
PART I Introduction: Networks and Hierarchies
1 Mystery of the Illuminati
2 Our Networked Age
4. Why Hierarchies?
6. Weak Ties and Viral Ideas
10. The Illuminati Illuminated
PART II Emperors and Explorers
11. A Brief History of Hierarchy
12. The First Networked Age
15. Pizarro and the Inca
16. When Gutenberg Met Luther
PART III Letters and Lodges
17. The Economic Consequences of the Reformation
18. Trading Ideas
19. Networks of Enlightenment
20. Networks of Revolution
PART IV The Restoration of Hierarchy
24. The House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
25. The House of Rothschild
26. Industrial Networks
PART V Knights of the Round Table
28. An Imperial Life
29. Empire
32. The Union of South Africa
PART VI Plagues and Pipers
36. The Plague
37. The Leader Principle
39. The Ring of Five
41. Ella in Reform School
PART VII Own the Jungle
44. The Crisis of Complexity
45. Henry Kissinger’s Network of Power
47. The Fall of the Soviet Empire
48. The Triumph of Davos Man
49. Breaking the Bank of England
PART VIII The Library of Babel
50. 9/ 11/ 2001
52. The Administrative State
53. Web 2.0
PART IX Conclusion: Facing Cyberia
57. Metropolis
58. Network Outage
Last chapter . . .
“And it is no longer a mere possibility that this network can be instrumentalized by corrupt oligarchs or religious fanatics to wage a new and unpredictable kind of war in cyberspace. That war has commenced.’’
Wow!
“Indices of geopolitical risk suggest that conventional and even nuclear war may not be far behind. Nor can it be ruled out that a ‘planetary superorganism’ created by the Dr Strangeloves of artificial intelligence may one day run amok, calculating –not incorrectly –that the human race is by far the biggest threat to the long-run survival of the planet itself and exterminating the lot of us.’’
Well . . .
“ ‘I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,’ said Evan Williams, one of the co-founders of Twitter in May 2017. ‘I was wrong about that.’”
“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks’’ or in modern speak - ‘garbage in - garbage out’
“The lesson of history is that trusting in networks to run the world is a recipe for anarchy: at best, power ends up in the hands of the Illuminati, but more likely it ends up in the hands of the Jacobins.’’
This is Robespierre- the original ‘terrorist’.
“Some today are tempted to give at least ‘two cheers for anarchism’. Those who lived through the wars of the 1790s and 1800s learned an important lesson that we would do well to re-learn: unless one wishes to reap one revolutionary whirlwind after another . . .’’
(This refers to Hosea 8:7 - “for they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind’’)
“ . . . it is better to impose some kind of hierarchical order on the world and to give it some legitimacy. At the Congress of Vienna, the five great powers agreed to establish such an order, and the pentarchy they formed provided a remarkable stability for the better part of the century that followed. Just over 200 years later, we confront the same choice they faced.’’
What form, or arrangement does Ferguson recommend?
“Conveniently, the architects of the post-1945 order created the institutional basis for such a new pentarchy in the form of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, an institution that retains the all-important ingredient of legitimacy. Whether or not these five great powers can make common cause once again, as their predecessors did in the nineteenth century, is the great geopolitical question of our time.’’
Interesting. This scholarly, erudite, historical, profound work, reaches the goal of. . .world government. Why? Ferguson recognizes the horror of the French Revolution; the overwhelming devastation of the thirty years war; the terrible cost of Napoleon’s ideas. As a historian, he knows peace and security are fleeting.
Page 427 - from a sermon in fourteenth century . . .
“But the Apocalypse, in the thirteenth chapter, presents war in the figure of a beast coming out of the sea with ten horns and seven heads, like a leopard, and with the feet of a bear. What do these ten horns signify?’’
The scripture reads - “And I saw a wild beast ascending out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, and on its horns ten diadems. Now the wild beast that I saw was like a leopard, but its feet were like those of a bear, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And the dragon gave to the beast its power and its throne and great authority.’’ Rev 13:1,2
The obvious meaning of horns is political power, and this beast has ‘power, throne, great authority’. Political hierarchy, using Ferguson’s term. Composite beast implies one organization made up of multiple separate ‘beasts’. This is a good image of what Ferguson believes necessary; one overarching ‘Tower’ (UN) to exercise ‘great authority’ over the ‘Square’ (society below).
Ferguson turns to Biblical source to illustrate modernity. Fascinating! Why? Seems to fit!
Fifty-one illustrations and twenty-five plates, full color (linked). Wonderful!
Fifty-one pages of linked references (2000?). Tremendous!
Forty-three page bibliography (800?) not linked. Amazing!
Twenty-four page exhaustive index (linked). Fantastic!
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‘Brings insights of myriad disciplines, ranging from economics to sociology, from neuroscience to organizational behavior’
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 24, 2018Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 21, 2019
Top reviews from other countries
North Yorkshire
I really wanted to like it ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 31, 2019Lotta Continua
Beguiling, provocative assessment of modern society
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 21, 2019Rob Peach
It’s better than Civilisation. It’s non put down able . R
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 29, 2020tony leach
Less impressed than I usually am by Niall Ferguson' books ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 26, 2018
