Home > Work > The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook
1 " we shall quickly find ourselves about as important to the algorithms as animals currently are to us. "
― Niall Ferguson , The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook
2 " In a time of chaos, it is the micro-manager who ascends "
3 " Because of preferential attachment, most social networks are profoundly inegalitarian. "
4 " intellectual diversity is the form of diversity that seems to be least valued in universities, "
5 " biggest changes in history are the achievements of thinly documented, informally organized groups "
6 " After 1500 not all roads led to Rome "
7 " the state of the future will need to function more like the human immune system "
8 " the secret of our success as a species ‘resides . . . in the collective brains of our communities "
9 " Unlike in the past, there are now two kinds of people in the world: those who own and run the networks, and those who merely use them. "
10 " Outlandish ideas stand a better chance of success if they come with royal approval. "
11 " Russia’s intelligence network did its utmost to damage his rival’s reputation, "
12 " Sometimes, as in the case of the American Revolution, crucial roles turn out to have been played by people who were not leaders but connectors. "
13 " Many historians still tend to assume that the spread of an idea or an ideology is a function of its inherent content in relation to some vaguely specified context. We must now acknowledge, however, that some ideas go viral because of structural features of the network through which they spread. They are least likely to do so in a hierarchical, top-down network, where horizontal peer-to-peer links are prohibited. "
14 " Had the Illuminati remained faithful to Weishaupt’s original blueprint, they would long ago have been forgotten, if they had ever been heard of at all. The key to their growth and later notoriety was their infiltration of German Masonic lodges "
15 " when set in its proper historical context, the present time appears less unnervingly unprecedented and more familiar. "
16 " Trump won ‘Trumpland "
17 " (Ownership of real property is second only to ownership of intellectual property "
18 " Is it better today to be in a network, which gives you influence, than in a hierarchy, which gives you power? "
19 " resisting the temptation to build complexity when (as in the case of financial regulation) simplicity is a better option. "
20 " 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. 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. "
