The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook Audiobook (Free)

The instant New York Times bestseller.

A brilliant recasting of the turning factors in world history, including the one we’re living through, like a collision between old power hierarchies and fresh social networks.

“Captivating and compelling.” -The NYC Times

‘Niall Ferguson has again written an excellent reserve…In 400 webpages you should have restocked your mind. Do it.’ -The Wall structure Street Journal

“The Square and the Tower, not only is it provocative history, may end up being about The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook a bellwether work of the web Age group.” -Christian Science Monitor

Most background is hierarchical: it’s about emperors, presidents, prime ministers and field marshals. It’s about state governments, armies and corporations. It’s about purchases from on high. Also background ‘from below’ is definitely frequently about trade unions and workers’ parties. But imagine if that’s simply because hierarchical institutions make the archives that historians rely on? What if we are missing the informal, much less well documented internet sites that are the true resources of power and motorists of change?

The 21st century continues to be hailed as age Networks. However, in The Square and the Tower, Niall Ferguson argues that systems will always be with us, from the structure of the brain to the food chain, from the family tree to freemasonry. Throughout background, hierarchies housed in high towers have claimed to guideline, but often true power provides resided in the networks in the town square below. For it is systems that tend to innovate. Which is through networks that revolutionary concepts can contagiously spread. Because conspiracy theorists prefer to fantasize about such networks doesn’t imply they are not real.

Through the cults of ancient Rome towards the dynasties from the Renaissance, through the founding fathers to Facebook, The Square as well as the Tower tells the story from the rise, fall and rise of networks, and shows how network theory–concepts such as for example clustering, levels of separation, weak ties, contagions and phase transitions–can transform our understanding of both the past and today’s.

Just as The Ascent of Money put Wall Street into historical perspective, therefore the Square and the Tower does the same for Silicon Valley. And it includes a striking prediction about which hierarchies will withstand this most recent influx of network disruption–and which is toppled.