Nexus

Bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari shows how information networks have shaped our world and now threaten to destroy it.

Over the past 100,000 years, humanity has gained immense power. Yet despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we find ourselves in an existential crisis today. The world is on the brink of ecological collapse. Misinformation is being spread in abundance. And we are plunging headfirst into the age of artificial intelligence – a new information network that threatens to erase us. If we are so smart, why are we so self-destructive?

"Nexus" illustrates how the flow of information has shaped us and our world. Yuval Noah Harari takes us from the Stone Age and biblical times through the early modern witch hunts, Stalinism, and Nazism to the resurgence of populism in today's world. He directs our attention to the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems have used information to achieve their goals – for better or worse. And he addresses the pressing decisions we face today as non-human intelligence threatens our existence.

Information is neither the raw material from which truth is made nor simply a weapon. "Nexus" explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes and shows how we can rediscover our shared humanity.

Abbreviated reading by Jürgen Holdorf.

2 MP3 CDs, approx. 15h 20min.