Information defines managers and their enterprises. We are our organisational DNA. Is business information power?
A manager’s success is often determined by the strength of the fabric of the stories they are able to weave in words and numbers. Yet, information is not truth.
"Most of it is junk," says historian Yuval Noah Harari about the information that populates the internet and social media, in a recent CNN interview with Walter Isaacson.
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI is Harari’s new book that challenges the twitter of conventional thinking.
Misinformation or insight?
“For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis.
The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive?
Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world.
Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonisation of the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power.
He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill.
And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence. Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon.
Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity” writes the publisher, Random House.
Attention grabbing corporate algorithm
At the heart of the matter, are super competitors, who are able to reach into the device in your pocket, with the sole aim of grabbing attention, labeled as user engagement.
All designed around a corporate algorithm intended to collect data, and get you to the next click, and the click after that, directing attention to sell advertising and products.
Harari’s point is that a corporate giant’s algorithm is designed solely to capture precious attention, to create a sense of excitement, provide a shot of Dopamine, produced when we feel satisfied, happy, and stimulated.
No, one can turn back the tide of our information age ocean, populated largely by whales, with a long list, including TikTok, X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram.
An attention-grabbing message or images, designed to capture a flicker of engagement, not to be confused with factual truth.
‘Always on’ means breakdown
Harari notes that humans work in circadian, day and night cycles that need rest, to dream, to replenish our grey matter and imagination.
Like any system, a human who is always on, without any self-regulating feedback mechanism will eventually breakdown. Yet, algorithms work non-stop, 24 hours a day, in all the years to come.
For astute businessmen, the Harari’s message is to have a sense awareness of the big picture.
Ability to compete, the differentiator between those who go with the flow, and those who choose to profitably swim upstream may be their ability to use the technology, but at the same time have the skill to look inwards and think for themselves.
To be able to create, to use the jargon “a seamless end to end user friendly experience” but to do it with a smiling human touch, that makes customers feel that they matter.
AI tools are great to use as a checklist of points, to make sure one is being comprehensive, not missing anything, but they are recycling past knowledge, putting it together in a convenient nicely wrapped package.
A perceptive manager knows how to use the broad array of management frameworks in their toolbox. But to get ahead of the curve, is able to make a creative imaginative leap forward, joining the dots to create an innovation, that the competitor only dreams of.
Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard - who understood not all information is truth - wrote “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
