Year XXXVII, Number 3, November 2024

Stroncature

Yuval Noah Harari
Nexus. A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
Penguin Random House, New York, 2024

In his latest book "Nexus", Yuval Noah Harari addresses an issue that has often been discussed in Stroncature, namely the flow of information in different political regimes such as democratic and totalitarian systems. In democracies, information networks are distributed, that is, information circulates freely through a multitude of independent channels. This allows for the existence of an open and pluralistic public debate in which different opinions and viewpoints can be compared. The free circulation of information promotes the transparency of institutions, the accountability of rulers to citizens and the participation of citizens in decision-making. In other words, in democracies, power is checked and limited by the dissemination of information and the possibility of criticism and dissent.

However, Harari notes that the distributed nature of democratic information networks also has some disadvantages. First, it can lead to fragmentation of public debate, with the formation of "bubbles" of homogeneous opinions that struggle to communicate with each other. In addition, freedom of expression can be exploited to spread disinformation and fake news, undermining trust in institutions and the ability of citizens to make informed decisions. Finally, the multiplicity of voices and interests at play can make it difficult to achieve the consensus needed to address complex and urgent challenges, such as climate change or economic inequality. To function effectively, therefore, democracies, according to the author, must strike a delicate balance between freedom of information, which is essential to the vitality of public debate, and the need for coordination and social cohesion, which is necessary to make collective decisions and pursue common goals.

In contrast, totalitarian systems aim to concentrate information in a single power center, strictly controlling its production and dissemination. This centralized structure allows for greater control over the population and more effective mobilization of resources toward common goals. However, the lack of transparency and debate makes totalitarian regimes more vulnerable to error, abuse and authoritarian drift.

The point is that the absence of self-correcting mechanisms in the centralized information networks of totalitarian regimes can lead to disastrous and even catastrophic decisions, as the cases of Stalinism in the Soviet Union and Nazism in Germany tragically demonstrate. When the flow of information is rigidly controlled and manipulated by a single power center, with no possibility of criticism or dissent, even the craziest and most harmful ideas can be transformed into state policies, with devastating consequences for millions of people. Stalinism, with its brutal forced collectivization of agriculture and mass purges, and Nazism, with its racist and genocidal delusions, are extreme examples of how the total centralization of information can divorce power from reality, dragging entire nations into a vortex of murderous madness.

In both cases, the systematic repression of dissent and the elimination of any critical voice  prevented the leadership from correcting their mistakes and adapting to changing circumstances, instead accelerating the drift toward the abyss. The lack of transparency and debate has blinded these regimes to their own contradictions and signs of crisis, fueling a spiral of paranoia and violence. Without the corrective feedback provided by a pluralistic public sphere and independent institutions, totalitarian leaders found themselves prisoners of their own ideological fantasies, unable to recognize the failures of their policies until it was too late.

While democracies, with their institutional counterweights and vibrant civil society, may still fall prey to dangerous illusions, they nevertheless retain the ability to self-correct through the free flow of information and the possibility of criticism and dissent. Totalitarian systems, in contrast, deprive themselves of this fundamental safety valve, by stifling all forms of pluralism and debate. Devoid of self-correction mechanisms, they are structurally incapable of recognizing and correcting their own errors, often ending up as the victims of them. Their apparent strength thus proves to be a fatal weakness, condemning them to implosion under the weight of their own lies and contradictions.

*Article published in Italian by STRONCATURE - www.stroncature.com - on September 30, 2024. We thank them for the authorization to translate and reproduce it