Niall Ferguson’s “The Square and the Tower”
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- Опубликовано: 24 янв 2018
- Recorded on November 9, 2017
With social networks like Facebook and Twitter in abundance, the effects of networks on society in the twenty-first century are inarguable. However, Niall Ferguson, author of The Square and the Tower, argues that networks are not a new phenomenon and have been impacting human culture from the beginning of history.
Niall Ferguson and Peter Robinson discuss networks and hierarchies throughout history in this episode of Uncommon Knowledge. Ferguson breaks down what he means by networks and hierarchies using the imagery of the Piazza Del Campo in Siena, where the Torre del Mangia, representing the hierarchy, casts a long shadow over the Piazza Del Campo, representing the network. Ferguson argues that this powerful imagery invokes the essence of his book and the intertwined nature of networks and hierarchies within society.
Ferguson goes on to discuss the importance of networks in social movements throughout history, including Martin Luther and the Reformation, Paul Revere and the American Revolution, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union, and social media and Donald Trump. He argues that a networked world is a dangerous world, in that it allows movements and societies to advance in unexpected ways.
For the full transcript go to
www.hoover.org/research/niall...
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About the Guest:
Niall Ferguson, MA, DPhil., is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior fellow of the Center for European Studies, Harvard, where he served for twelve years as the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History. He is also a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation Distinguished Scholar at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. He is the author of fifteen books, most recently The Square and the Tower.
Related Articles:
• The Square and the Tower: www.hoover.org/research/squar...
• The Square and the Tower: (33:01): • The Square and the Tower
• 'The Square and the Tower' considers the staggering power of networks: www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-...
• Network Concerns: www.hoover.org/research/netwo...
Niall Feruson is incredible, and Peter Robinson is terrific as an interviewer. I've watched many of his Podcasts. He's read the books, he asked great, insightful questions that get to the heart of (whatever) matter. Many, many in media could take a lesson from him.
Jim Deiner yea he reminds me of Keith Olbermans SANE half brother, Kenneth
Peter Robinson is a legend
I am lying in bed on Sunday morning listening to this wonderful discussion. It is such a stimulating way to start my day. Niall Ferguson is truly challenging and I laud his ideas.
If there is anything I am thankful to newly emerged networks (RUclips - prime example), is ta chance to watch and learn from Niall Ferguson. Even 20 years ago, this would have been the privilege of the Oxford and Harvard and alike. Love him!
Thanks for all your contributions to balanced critical dialogue, Mr. Ferguson. And thanks to the ever-excellent Peter Robinson too. Also to many of the commentators below.
The internet has helped me become more politically moderate by allowing me to better understand the desires of my fellow Americans. A common comment from people I talk to is that they are tired of the polarization and tension caused by the constant drip of confirmation provided by the personnel information bubble. I am hopeful that as a society we will learn to resist polarization and come together to solve our common problems. - Thanks for an enlightening interview.
Well done, Terry. It's an interesting interview but I think what's patently absent from this basically two-dimensional discussion is an analysis of the fog of lack of accountability and correction which prevails in cyberspace. Inside this, members of both the square and the tower readily hide themselves, their motives and their assets nowadays. The smoke machine of misinformation is easily obscuring the additional disclosure the internet has provided. It's been quite a surprise for me.
I can say the same, although rather than calling myself moderate, which I've always been, I'm now right moderate as conservatives seem to be the only ones with rational, well-formulated arguments about what's happening in society. I've left the left and they continue to remain unconvincing.
Your hopes are rather naive. History proves this out. The "square" is out of control and the tweeter n chief leads the charge. He just also happens to be the biggest trojan horse in history and the most powerful person on the planet.
Niall Ferguson for the win!
If there are any Thomas Sowell fans lurking about, I have a series on my channel that adapts his book 'Basic Economics' chapter by chapter for your audiovisual pleasure. Eight chapters in so far - check it out!
YOu're an angel.
excellent ! I am one of them ! Thanks
Sowell is right wing supply side economist idiot akin to Allan Greenspan
It says private video.
"(Stalin's) paranoia extended even to eavesdropping on a poet..." The German movie 'The Lives of Others' about the communist East German Stasi is very much about this level of all-seeing totalitarian monitoring of its citizens.
Also, paraphrasing Alexis de Tocqueville, "Centralization is the enemy of liberty and decentralization is the friend of liberty." No truer words were ever spoken.
Niall Ferguson is one of my favourite authors and his Ted Talk on the critical apps of the West, is one that I reference over and over again. This was a fascinating conversation and I’m going to from this comment section to Amazon to order his book!
Listening now. Thanks!
I found that very valuable. I read the book but I needed that conversation to get my mind around it
NF is a real creative, discovering insights that he then shares through his book.
First comment and first like from KUWAIT :)
Thank you for upload
Thank you for interviewed Niall Ferguson
LOL
I think Niall Ferguson hit on something big here that even he may not have realized, but I will be examining more closely myself. What if human societies are not structured from the bottom-up or the top-down as commonly described, but from the outside-inward or the center-outward? This could change our entire perspective of history, that it's not the case that the "little guy" has to climb up the ladder and knock the "big guy" of his perch, but the outsider who must advance forward towards the center and push the central authority to the outside. I came to wonder this when Niall proposed that a hierarchy is itself a form of network.
The Bazaar and the Cathedral is a name for a common debate in computer science, between unstructured open source development and rigidly structured closed source software.
Just got his book in the mail and am very much so looking forward to reading it.
Interesting way to make sense of the world. Thank you for posting.
This guy is very impressive.
Through most of this episode, I was leaning toward getting this book; the last fifth managed to dissuade me. G.
Yeah, seriously. All along he seemed to be extolling the virtues of the square, but what he really wants is the tower. Did he really recommend a 21st century version of the Concert of Europe to manage the world's affairs?
It would be interesting to listen to Niall Ferguson's view on the Free Software movement as a way to possibly reverse or ameliorate the growing power of the big internet companies (Facebook, Google, Amazon).
Hugo I like that idea and I’d love to talk on it. Can you email me at catalin@increasemedia.com if you’re open for a conversation! Thanks
there is a common theme with Teleb's "Antifragile" in which teleb describes systems that are centralized as more rigid and therefore more fragile, while decentralized systems are more capable of dealing with real life changes.
Brilliant discussion. Niaill is a proper genius with real insight.
This is why the Chinese government just love the concentration of "platforms" and the chat companies. In the West, to think that Whatsapp, Instagram, and Facebook are the same company - and that governments have not, yet, stepped in to break up their monopoly-like business - is truly mind boggling!
This reminds me of Daniel Quinn’s competing conceptions of society’s, namely tribal circles and hiearchal triangles. I think a better way of viewing society might be as a 3 dimensional cone, the triangle merged with the circle.
"Private groups are a sign of liberty. But 5 countries should rule the world and break up private groups if they get too large"
TGGeko yeah he doesn’t see the irony. Cognitive dissonance.
Bit late to the party, and I expect others have pointed this out, but Brezhnev is featured twice on Kissinger's ego-chart.
Niall is a great author. It will be interesting to see how the book stacks up, though the title sounds like a rip-off of: The Cathedral and the Bazaar - a book discussing distributed(Linux) and hierarchical software development.
A banquet for the intellect. Thanks so much.
Facebook isn't a content publisher. They don't create the content, nor do they hit the "publish" button. It's like blaming the printer or the paper mill owner for the content of the articles in a newspaper... Therefore you can't regulate them the same way.
Edouard Deflandre Facebook is like the phone company. They are there to provide a platform to communicate. They should play no favorites
Phone company that chooses who can call you about changing energy provider at dinnertime.
Eduouard your analogy doesn't hold up. User's sign terms and conditions which make Facebook the power that is over all of the content it publishes. Facebook if it chooses to, maintains editorial control. It's more like Facebook is receiving all of the letters to the editor, but sometimes the editor takes a look at whether it stops the press for and sometimes it doesn't. Oh and look at all of the advertising space next to the subscriber letters. It certainly has editorial control over advertising. If anything, it shows that the publisher is undermining corporate and social responsibility. Probably why it's so easy to have other biased publishers choosing sides and neglecting factual reporting standards these days in favour of endless op-eds that suit the advertisers.
Ms. Mac Donald has done a great service to humanity and, hopefully, her book will be read at our colleges and universities along side Shakespeare and Chaucer and Wadsworth and Plato and Aristotle at some point in the not to distant future.
Peter! If you happen to read this - do you happen to know if Ferguson read/used “The Sociology of Philosophies” by Randall Collins? Sounds like similar territory.
43:00 Niall predicts the Cambridge Analytica scandal
26:45 Ferguson applies networking theory nicely to Stalinism; the hierarchical control of networks was perhaps THE essential feature of totalitarian rule, and was applied in all of the states where Communism was imposed. We perhaps can call civic society as the web of networks. The ex-Communist states still suffer from the effects of this. In the case of Poland, the Church survived as a network, and its subsequent disproportionate influence is a result of this. 38:22 Isn't the EU exactly the sort of "hierchical order" needed, at least for Europe? Or at least one of the "big five" on a world scale?
truly inspiring
We have the perfect example - Jan Hus did much of what Luther did, but he was 100 years before the printing press.
Ferguson's books and documentaries bring history alive, with their counterfactuals; pop culture references; and vivid sense of time and place. Certainly the most interesting of the current crop of popular TV historians. However, as with other TV historians his views on contemporary politics appear shrill and unoriginal, even reactionary.
So excellent...
Don't be bored.
Excellent.
Why does Brezhnev have two nodes in the Kissinger network illustration (upper left and bottom right) ?.
I don't think that our society is more polarized now that we were, say, 50 years ago. What is different now is that there is more transparency and, in a sense, honesty. The erosion of the politically correct culture is allowing people to say what they really think, which it is in a way a good thing. We should be able to bring back the pendulum and infuse civility to this honesty wave.
I remember when Neil Postman was interviewed here, I wonder what the writer of "Amusing Ourselves To Death" Television and the End Of the World. (I added the last, albeit MOST LITERARY PEOPLE also so think...
thanks for the upload! Sounds like a good book
It sounds to me like the "Civil Society" that people talk about with nation-building has a great deal of relation to the networking Ferguson talks about. Maybe network theory is a way of quantifying measurements of Civil Society that would be necessary to support a healthy democracy.
One of the great tragedies of history is that Christopher Hitchens and Neil Ferguson didn't have a recorded debate about the legacy of Henry Kissinger.
Have of mop and a bucket available.
Love this guy. Great scholar. Beacon of light in a dumb world.
"But although all citizens, without exception, can and ought to contribute to that common good in which individuals share so advantageously to themselves, yet it should not be supposed that all can contribute in the like way and to the same extent. No matter what changes may occur in forms of government, there will ever be differences and inequalities of condition in the State. Society cannot exist or be conceived of without them."
Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum
Niall Ferguson is the man
The Vienna pentarchy was officially over with the First Moroccan Crisis with the rise of the US and Italy being recognized as new great powers, later adding Japan. You could also argue that it ended with the Italian liberation in 1866 that created a power superior to Austro-Hungaria or by the Monroe doctrine in 1823 which made the US a de facto great power. So by all means the pentarchy lasted in between 9 to 91 years. We are now 73 years post 1945, so the Vienna pentarchy as a reference indicates that the current system is outdated, especially through the exclusions of India, Japan and Germany and Brazil that can be seens as on the level of Russia.
strange how some guys criticise without offering any relevant canon from history, help solve the problems of our time. disclaimer his a historian and he did mention retrospective distortion of facebook, google.. technology in general.
You see, this is why you need to meditate and listen to Bach. Otherwise, you'll become a shrimp.
Ferguson is pretty damn good for a Brit
Niall should consider the implications of the blockchain. It will all for cryptographically and economically enforced networks.
Wow... Didn't know
Excellent book, though it barely touches on blockchain and crypto currencies. Expect that to change in the next edition haha.
How’s his hagiography of Larry Summers going?
Notice that he refers the the 17th century in Europe. That century was dominated by the 30-year war -- one of the bloodiest conflicts in European history.
By thinking about different happenings I have come to the same conclusion. We are heading for a kind of war that we don't remember any more; not a conventional war between states, not a civil war inside one state, but a combination of both. Like the 30-year war.
it's the campo of siena, not piazza, next to the tower. and the campo is the place for the very formal festivals, so it's hardly the opposite to the so called tower. it's so symbolic but perhaps untrue a comparison.
@haoru Ignoramus! It's called Piazza del Campo in Italian. And it's right next to the tower, torre del Mangia.
look for paper . the architecture of complexity. herbert simon
nearly decomposable heararchy
Has anyone read this book yet? Thoughts?
Uncle Tanner I haven’t read this book yet but his book The Ascent of Money was exceptionally well written.
The nature of networks is obvious to anybody who has held a position of significant responsibility in a functioning and productive organisation.
I have just finished the book and am watching the video to understand his thought better, As I Liberal , I was initially alarmed. His support of deregulation in the book especially alarmed me. He in the book ends tipping toward a leak future. He sees problems with both hierarchy and networking.
Anything with a little classical music at the beginning and a British accent I believe 100%, as I drink a little tea with my pinkie sticking out in the proper way.
“Can we put up with France for another Century?”
Ferguson's model of social reality is novel and provocative. Seems slightly arbitrary at a first glance but I'm open to any clearly stated, well-reasoned argument for legitimate hierarchy in social order. We're going to need to be suspicious of cascading power in mindless social networks in the first half of 21c
The square is the last oil field and the tower is the clock 11:59
The node of node hall
I was with him until 48:00, where he suggests the social platforms should be legally obligated to curate content (or face liability). This would amount to enforced suppression of dissent (which, oddly, is contrary to some of the things he appears to value in other parts of this talk).
Kissinger was the tip of the war spear
The Kissinger’s “networking” diagram is painfully naive. A simple list or even a sorted table would work much better for such a trivial illustration.
Sounds like a smart person who likes to assume others cannot be more competent than him and constructing a worldview around that.
By the way, most people of the East think of HK as a butcher.
Always enjoy Niall- but this didn't age well.
Thank you for this! (..and the list of books I need to buy grows longer again! Oy vey!)
Okay, I think I've got the picture of where this guy is coming from. He is a leading thinker in the old way at looking at the world. That's a shame, oh well.
Of all the political leaders Putin is Ferguson's best poster boy. Personally connected to all important people in Russia and the World Putin also builds networks within Russia's elite and youth alike
Rothschild: = red shield.
Therefore it is pronounced rot-schild. Actually a German name, isn't it?
WE NEED TO RAISE THE PYRAMID. NOT TO FLATTEN IT.
I am surprised that people like this one are still in business!
I'm a loner, i do my own thing, and so therefor the only people i know basically are formal powers. I guess i'm by default a hierarchy type of person
SET THE MARKETS FREE.
You're completely ignoring how many people have gone from nothing to having a large following and making very good money. It offered more opportunity in an area that wasn't previously available. Yes, we are in a transition and the worst parts will seem amplified but no, the evidence does not prove what you say. Your basically saying the internet is bad, the printing press is bad, anything where people who can finally have a voice, is bad because it allows that to become obvious.
It's not anywhere near perfect, it's young, but it has offered a world of new opportunities and fields that we wouldn't have had otherwise. It also allows people to be more educated regardless of their class.
What teachers in 4th grade assume book reports should look like
I once thought and I thought once have different meanings NYT.
Niall, Luther was not a utopian. He was quite a realist, though his own views were actually quite socially conservative. The Reformation was a broad network and was a conflict for truth, which lands in division and is always ongoing.
He is good in narrating how the man lived when he is living following his own wishes without permanent values. But like others he has no solution to offer to get something better. Read the book What is Islam by Parwez... for a non religious and non humant intellect approach to finding solutions... e.g. read chapt 6..
The Peter Principle, now out of print, is a far better exploration of hierarchies. Haven't read the book, but he misses so many important points such as, men tend to hierarchies, and women to network because it is men who defend. He is more wrong about the Protestants than he is right; for example, belief in witchcraft was higher before. Again I am reminded of Sowell's warning against elitist intellectuals. There's a few men, like Hanson and Sowell who manage not to be corrupted by the stupidity of higher education. This man is not among them, he is useless.
if the twitter founder had known his history he prob wouldn't of founded twitter, so it balances out..
542 thumbs up, yet 24 thumbs down -- when no one in their right mind would vote this down. Censorship at work...
"We" he uses often? He may live here, but is really part of "We"?
The Trump thing, there's an assumption that old people (how old is that) don't know how to use technology. I'm 63 I first logged onto the "internet' in 1993, I've never been catching up, I'm a first adopter. Don't think old people don't know, 80 year olds might not, 60 year olds do.
Such Academic and one sided observation. These people forget that the Original and most powerful Network is the family then relatives, then community then Council(Panchayat), this is not new. Just forgotten. Too much western hegemonic glib glob. Niall Ferguson is a Western Supremist in his attitude. I could go on and on. However the self - flagellation of the West liberal left about their past is just as distasteful. As far as globalisation goes, I think that when all these discussions take place, there should be more mixed cultural input for perspective. Lots of Western Models are very flawed. I name Marxism, Fascism, Socialism, Capitalism, Nazism etc...
Think for your self, go within to find the truth.
I concur, sir. "Western Models" are imperfect. Many pernicious. But the "better angels" of the best assay to learn from their mistakes. Western Supremist? I guess the epithets of disdain for us are inexhaustible. BTW, I regard India with awe.
Disconcerting in a most terrible way, but obviously true....
lol the british trying to bring er back
"The Square and the Tower" This man is a Free Mason
if NF thinks facebook was crucial to winning brexit, he's tripping. RUclips definitely helped but not fb.
Don't agree with you.
NF actually said it was older provincial voters coopted/influenced by FB to vote leave. I disagree. FB may very well have influenced younger people to vote remain but the number of over 70's using FB is small. Certainly we'll all know older folk on FB but predominantly they got information from newspapers and debates. They also regard voting as a duty and make every effort to do so.
GO TRUMP.
A guy who claims to be a network man proposes a Vienna congress. What a hypocrite.
This guy is way wrong. 90% of Brits voted for Brexit because they are not Europeans, they are Brits.
What a bad analysis saying Trump won because Twitter and Facebook backfired. SMDH. Good Grief Charlie Brown.
We call them Anglo Saxons because Germans gg^^
52 % voted leave 48% of brits didn't
Niall is like Piers Morgan, he's just in it for the fame and the fake presentation of being an "intellectual"
Niall knows about history but knows nothing about LIFE ....REAL LIFE. HOW TO PAY A ELECTRICITY BILL . TO WORRY WHERE YOUR NEXT MEAL. NOTHING ABOUT LOVE , ABOUT COMMON HUMAN FEELS. THE MAN IS BLIND TO REAL LIFE. AT THE END OF THE DAY HIS HEART IS EMPTY.