The square and the tower Networks and power, from the Freemasons to Facebook

Niall Ferguson

Book - 2018

"A brilliant recasting of the turning points in world history, including the one we're living through, as a struggle between old power hierarchies and new social networks. Most history is hierarchical: it's about popes, presidents, prime ministers and other potentates. It's about states, armies and corporations. It's about orders from on high. But what if that's simply because hierarchical institutions create the archives that historians rely on? What if we are missing the less visible social networks that are the true drivers of change--leaving them to the conspiracy theorists, with their dreams of all-powerful Illuminati? The twenty-first century has been hailed as the Age of Networks. However, in [this book]..., Niall Ferguson argues that networks have always been with us, from the structure of the brain to the food chain, from the family tree to freemasonry. Throughout history, hierarchies housed in high towers have claimed to rule, but often real power has resided in the networks in the town square below. For it is networks that tend to innovate. And it is through networks that revolutionary ideas can contagiously spread. Just because conspiracy theorists like to fantasize about such networks doesn't mean they are not real. From the cults of ancient Rome to the dynasties of the Renaissance, from the founding fathers to Facebook, The Square and the Tower tells the story of the rise, fall and rise of networks. Far from being novel, Ferguson argues, our era is the Second Networked Age, with the personal computer in the role of the printing press. And he shows how network theory--concepts such as homophily, degrees of separation, weak ties, viral contagions and phase transitions--can transform our understanding of both the past and the present. Just as The Ascent of Money put Wall Street into historical perspective as the financial crisis struck ten years ago, so The Square and the Tower does for Silicon Valley as political storm clouds gather over the tech titans. Those who prophesize a global community of interconnected netizens are in for a shock, Ferguson warns. For the conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries already have unnerving parallels today in the time of Facebook, the Islamic State and Trump."--Dust jacket.

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Subjects
Published
New York : Penguin Press 2018.
Language
English
Main Author
Niall Ferguson (author)
Physical Description
xxvii, 563 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 436-536) and index.
ISBN
9780735222939
9780735222915
  • List of Illustrations
  • List of Plates
  • Preface: The Networked Historian
  • Part I. Introduction: Networks and Hierarchies
  • 1. The Mystery of the Illuminati
  • 2. Our Networked Age
  • 3. Networks, Networks Everywhere
  • 4. Why Hierarchies?
  • 5. From Seven Bridges to Six Degrees
  • 6. Weak Ties and Viral Ideas
  • 7. Varieties of Network
  • 8. When Networks Meet
  • 9. Seven Insights
  • 10. The Illuminati Illuminated
  • Part II. Emperors and Explorers
  • 11. A Brief History of Hierarchy
  • 12. The First Networked Age
  • 13. The Art of the Renaissance Deal
  • 14. Discoverers
  • 15. Pizarro and the Inca
  • 16. When Gutenberg Met Luther
  • Part III. Letters and Lodges
  • 17. The Economic Consequences of the Reformation
  • 18. Trading Ideas
  • 19. Networks of Enlightenment
  • 20. Networks of Revolution
  • Part IV. The Restoration of Hierarchy
  • 21. The Red and the Black
  • 22. From Crowd to Tyranny
  • 23. Order Restored
  • 24. The House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
  • 25. The House of Rothschild
  • 26. Industrial Networks
  • 27. From Pentarchy to Hegemony
  • Part V. Knights of the Round Table
  • 28. An Imperial Life
  • 29. Empire
  • 30. Taiping
  • 31. The Chinese Must Go'
  • 32. The Union of South Africa
  • 33. Apostles
  • 34. Armageddon
  • Part VI. Plagues and Pipers
  • 35. Greenmantle
  • 36. The Plague
  • 37. The Leader Principle
  • 38. The Fall of the Golden International
  • 39. The Ring of Five
  • 40. Brief Encounter
  • 41. Ella in Reform School
  • Part VII. Own the Jungle
  • 42. The Long Peace
  • 43. The General
  • 44. The Crisis of Complexity
  • 45. Henry Kissinger's Network of Power
  • 46. Into the Valley
  • 47. The Fall of the Soviet Empire
  • 48. The Triumph of Davos Man
  • 49. Breaking the Bank of England
  • Part VIII. The Library of Babel
  • 50. 9/11/2001
  • 51. 9/15/2008
  • 52. The Administrative State
  • 53. Web 2.0
  • 54. Coming Apart
  • 55. Tweeting the Revolution
  • 56. 11/9/2016
  • Part IX. Conclusion: Facing Cyberia
  • 57. Metropolis
  • 58. Network Outage
  • 59. FANG, BAT and EU
  • 60. The Square and the Tower Redux
  • Afterword: The Original Square and Tower
  • Appendix
  • References
  • Bibliography
  • Index
Review by Booklist Review

Until the twentieth century, virtually all histories were written as top-down accounts, with the emphasis upon kings, queens, generals, and religious and economic elites. More recently, bottom-up historians have strived to include the roles played by the middle and lower classes. Both approaches can be termed hierarchical. Renowned and sometimes controversial historian Ferguson proposes an alternative approach. He asserts that networks have long challenged and often surmounted in power and influence vertical hierarchies (the tower). These networks (the square) are horizontal, often crossing lines of class, religion, and ethnicity. They can be formal or informal and are often leaderless. Today, of course, the Internet and social media show the pervasive power of a technologically based network. But networks, Ferguson asserts, are as old as civilization, and he offers examinations of intriguing examples. There's the Illuminati, originating in eighteenth-century Germany; aristocratic networks in the late Roman Republic; and various religious networks, including the earliest forms of Christianity and Islam. Ferguson has written a provocative and intellectually challenging work that should promote consideration and debate among academics and laypersons.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Communications breakthroughs drive a centuries-long war between monolithic power and connected innovators in this sweeping conceptual history of the modern world. Historian Ferguson (The Ascent of Money) examines several turns in the ever-shifting relationship between entrenched hierarchies and upstart "networks": the 15th-century invention of the printing press enabled Protestants to challenge the Catholic Church and Enlightenment intellectuals and revolutionaries to overthrow monarchies; the advent of railroads, telegraphs, and radio allowed some bureaucratic states to become totalitarian dictatorships in the 20th century; the rise of the internet undermined hierarchical corporate and government control while empowering network monopolies such as Facebook. Ferguson's episodic narrative explores these themes through vivid profiles of influential networks, from the 18th-century Illuminati (far more feckless than their conspiratorial reputation suggests) to the Rothschild banking empire, Cambridge University's Apostles circle (an incubator of avant-garde literature, gay sex, and espionage), and Wikileaks. Ferguson's occasional use of mathematical network-theory charts and jargon ("In terms of betweenness centrality, the king came first") doesn't add much to his analysis; still, his typically bold rethinking of historical currents, painted on the broadest canvas, offers many stimulating insights on the tense interplay between order, oppression, freedom, and anarchy. Photos. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Ferguson's (senior fellow, Hoover Inst.; Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire) comprehensive history uses a new perspective. Generally speaking, history has been written by those from the hierarchical, ruling class. However, most innovation and revolution begins in the "square," where the majority of people live. Within that square are the networks and organizations that lead to change. Ferguson uses theoretical concepts, including degrees of separation and weak ties, to show that networks throughout history have been as important as powerful individuals in the tower. Secret and not-so-secret societies (such as the Illuminati and Freemasons) are discussed, as they were carriers of information when those in the tower chose which versions of history were recorded. This book also describes the historical events leading to the creation of Silicon Valley. Readers of any historical time period will relish this new lens upon which events can be viewed. VERDICT An excellent addition to any collection on the nature of networks, information flow, and secret societies.-Jason L. Steagall, Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Renowned economic historian Ferguson (Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist, 2015, etc.) draws on insights from network theory to examine disruptions across time.Governments and other hierarchies are stable, suggests the author, building on insights by Henry Kissinger, to the extent that they are flexible in the face of changing conditions. So it was that, for instance, mid-19th-century Europe enjoyed several decades of unwonted peace, having reached a way of accommodating "the old hierarchies of hereditary rule and the new networks of globalization." As political stances became entrenched, with a unified Germany in constant opposition to France, the inflexibility reduced political and diplomatic maneuverability, and war followed. As Ferguson notes, networks have tended to disrupt hierarchy even though networks do not necessarily possess much power themselves. Writing about his own situation as a well-placed intellectual with affiliations to places like Harvard and Stanford, he notes that he doesn't even have the authority to decide who gets into his classes. What is more important is the structure of the network, with gatekeepers who, in essence, determine what information is admitted and what information is releasedinformation that sometimes has revolutionary, hierarchy-breaking capabilities. Ferguson, a noted conservative, is refreshingly evenhanded. In discussing the viral qualities of conspiracy theory, for instance, it's clear that he regards conspiracymongers such as Alex Jones as noxious twerps while admitting, "this may be lunatic, but lunacy that appeals to more than a fringe." It is also clear that the author admires networkers more than hierarchs such as the current presidentwho, as he points out, insists, "characteristically," that his New York tower has 10 more floors than it really does. By the same token, Ferguson is scornful of hierarchs who use the tools of networkers ineptly, such as the data mavens who botched the Affordable Care Act computer systems.Making profitable use of information science, Ferguson offers a novel way of examining data that will be highly intriguing to students of history and current affairs. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.