Niall Ferguson

A reevaluation of history's turning points as collisions between old power hierarchies and new social networks explains how networks have always existed and have been responsible for key innovations and revolutionary ideas.

Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook

The Square and the Tower

Matthew Royal

Niall Ferguson’s thesis that many conflicts in history can be understood as the conflict between power hierarchies and social networks is descriptive, but underdeveloped. His title is a knockoff of Eric S. Raymond's seminal, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," and unfortunately its conceptual development is equally shallow. Most striking of this books faults is the change in tone. At the beginning of the book, he sounded like a name-dropping academic who relishes curating his collection of weak social ties to powerful people. At the end, he's the breathless alarmist of that email your mom forwarded to you in blazing red, all caps Comic Sans. In his conclusion, it's clear that Ferguson's motto is "In hierarchy we trust." It's a very heavy bias unsubstantiated by fact. He doesn't attempt to give a justification; he lists all the network transformations in politics and society that threaten the hierarchy in which he's apparently invested. 

This last part of the book reads like the author gave up on making thoughtful statements, and completed the rest of the book by copy-pasting angry baby boomer rants. He decries the modern use of smart phones, saying that using them up to five hours a day indicates some sort of crisis of human connection. It's human connection that these people are finding in their electronic devices. He says that people are abandoning traditional institutions, but he fails to recognize that they're transitioning from “traditional" hierarchical institutions to newer, network-based institutions online. It would be far more interesting if the author were to discuss the consequences of moving from a hierarchical society to a network society, however he asserts without evidence that a network society is necessarily chaotic and unstable. Certainly, according to his own accounts, networks can be extremely effective. 

Additionally, I was expecting the author to cover the political manipulations of social networks such as Facebook to the political advantage of Donald Trump in this last presidential election. However, he left the topic completely untouched other than to say Russia does it. It would be very interesting to describe attacks against social networks as attacks intended to isolate nodes in the network, or break them into small cliques of like-minded individuals that don't have the weak connections necessary to make an impact in The Wider Social Network.

There are a wonderful collection of instances throughout history where hierarchy-network conflicts occurred, but Ferguson fails to move beyond the “stamp collecting” phase of his thesis to rigorous analysis and synthesis of useful prediction. At best, it’s a rough draft; but it felt to me like bait-and-switch.

The instant New York Times bestseller. A brilliant recasting of the turning points in world history, including the one we're living through, as a collision between old power hierarchies and new social networks. "Captivating and compelling." --The New York Times "Niall Ferguson has again written a brilliant book...In 400 pages you will have restocked your mind. Do it." --The Wall Street Journal "The Square and the Tower, in addition to being provocative history, may prove to be a bellwether work of the Internet Age." --Christian Science Monitor Most history is hierarchical: it's about emperors, presidents, prime ministers and field marshals. It's about states, armies and corporations. It's about orders from on high. Even history "from below" is often about trade unions and workers' parties. But what if that's simply because hierarchical institutions create the archives that historians rely on? What if we are missing the informal, less well documented social networks that are the true sources of power and drivers of change? The 21st century has been hailed as the Age of Networks. However, in The Square and the Tower, 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, and shows how network theory--concepts such as clustering, degrees of separation, weak ties, 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, so The Square and the Tower does the same for Silicon Valley. And it offers a bold prediction about which hierarchies will withstand this latest wave of network disruption--and which will be toppled.

The Square and the Tower Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook

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