The Square and the tower :
Ferguson, Niall
The Square and the tower : networks, hierarchies and the struggle for global power / Niall Ferguson. - [London] : Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2017. - xxvii, 573p., 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), color maps ; 24cm.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 439-536) and index.
The twenty-first century has been hailed as the Networked Age. But in this book,the author argues that social networks are nothing new. From the printers and preachers who made the Reformation to the freemasons who led the American Revolution, it was the networkers who disrupted the old order of popes and kings. Far from being novel, our era is the Second Networked Age, with the personal computer in the role of the printing press. Those looking forward to a utopia of interconnected 'netizens' may therefore be disappointed. For networks are prone to clustering, contagions, and even outages. And the conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries already have unnerving parallels today, in the time of Facebook, Islamic State and Trumpworld.
9780241290460 0241290465 9780241298985 0241298989
2017-434784
GBB7D5399 bnb
018458378 Uk
Social networks--History.
Civilization--Social aspects--History.
Power (Social sciences)
HM741 / .F424 2017
302.309 / FER
The Square and the tower : networks, hierarchies and the struggle for global power / Niall Ferguson. - [London] : Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2017. - xxvii, 573p., 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), color maps ; 24cm.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 439-536) and index.
The twenty-first century has been hailed as the Networked Age. But in this book,the author argues that social networks are nothing new. From the printers and preachers who made the Reformation to the freemasons who led the American Revolution, it was the networkers who disrupted the old order of popes and kings. Far from being novel, our era is the Second Networked Age, with the personal computer in the role of the printing press. Those looking forward to a utopia of interconnected 'netizens' may therefore be disappointed. For networks are prone to clustering, contagions, and even outages. And the conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries already have unnerving parallels today, in the time of Facebook, Islamic State and Trumpworld.
9780241290460 0241290465 9780241298985 0241298989
2017-434784
GBB7D5399 bnb
018458378 Uk
Social networks--History.
Civilization--Social aspects--History.
Power (Social sciences)
HM741 / .F424 2017
302.309 / FER