âInformation is the glue that holds human societies together. But itâs a strange kind of glueâmade as much of fiction as of fact.â â Nexus, Chapter 1
Harari begins by challenging our assumptions about information. In the popular imagination, information is synonymous with facts, data, and truth. But this is a dangerously naive view. Information, in its most fundamental sense, is simply anything that connects.
A lie is information. A myth is information. A conspiracy theory is information. They all serve to connect people, coordinate behavior, and shape the worldâsometimes far more powerfully than dry facts.
Naive View: More information = more truth = better decisions = better world
Sophisticated View: Information can enlighten or deceive, unite or divide, liberate or enslave. The quality and structure of information networks matter more than the quantity of information.
Think about what information actually does in the world. A religious text connects millions of believers across centuries. A national anthem connects citizens to their country. A shared rumor connects a village. None of these need to be âtrueâ in the scientific sense to be powerful.
This is Harariâs key insight: the power of information lies not in its truth value but in its connective capacity. The Bible connected billions of humans across millennia not because it contains empirically verifiable facts, but because it tells compelling stories that give life meaning and coordinate social behavior.
Harari identifies three primary functions that information serves in human societies:
1. Representation: Information can represent realityâmaps, scientific theories, news reports. This is what we typically think of as the âpurposeâ of information.
2. Connection: Information connects people who share itâbelievers in the same religion, citizens of the same nation, fans of the same team. The information doesnât need to be true to connect.
3. Coordination: Information coordinates actionâlaws, schedules, prices, signals. Again, truth is optional; what matters is that everyone acts on the same information.
Hereâs the paradox at the heart of human civilization: our greatest achievements depend on large-scale cooperation, and large-scale cooperation depends on shared informationâbut that shared information is often fictional.
Consider money. A dollar bill is a piece of paper (or these days, a number in a database). It has no inherent value. Yet billions of people coordinate their daily activities based on shared beliefs about these fictional constructs. The same is true for corporations, nations, human rights, and countless other âimagined realities.â
Chimpanzees can cooperate in groups of about 150 because they rely on personal knowledgeâknowing each individual. Humans can cooperate in groups of millions because we share stories about gods, nations, and laws that exist only in our collective imagination.
This isnât a weakness; itâs a superpower. But it comes with risks: the same capacity that allows us to believe in human rights also allows us to believe in racial hierarchies.
Harari argues that we cannot simply counter misinformation with truth. Why? Because truth alone doesnât create the connections and coordination that societies need. You canât run a country on peer-reviewed scientific papers. You need stories, symbols, and shared beliefs.
The challenge isnât to eliminate fiction from our information networksâthatâs impossible. The challenge is to build networks that can distinguish between useful fictions (like money and human rights) and harmful delusions (like conspiracy theories and totalitarian ideologies).
We assume that more information leads to better understanding. But the opposite can be true. Information overload can paralyze decision-making. Algorithmic curation can create filter bubbles. The sheer volume of information makes it easier, not harder, to find âevidenceâ for any belief, no matter how absurd.
This chapter establishes the bookâs central concern: if information networks are the foundation of human civilization, and if those networks are now being transformed by artificial intelligence, what happens next?
AI doesnât just process information fasterâit generates, curates, and distributes information in ways that could fundamentally reshape human networks. Will this lead to greater wisdom or greater delusion? Better coordination or deeper division? Thatâs what the rest of the book explores.