Niall Ferguson on 'The Square and the Tower'

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4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2018

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jack Goldsmith interviews Niall Ferguson about Ferguson's latest book, "The Square and the Tower: Networks, Hierarchies, and the Struggle for Power."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair
0:07.2	podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair.
0:14.7	That's patreon.com slash LawFair.
0:18.2	Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair
0:25.6	no bull and the aftermath.
0:33.7	I think we should be more worried than we are in that the way in which our technology works
0:43.5	is a little different.
0:45.9	The printing press remained a distributed network.
0:49.4	Goodburg didn't control all the printing presses in Germany.
0:53.0	There was actually no central control really.
0:56.6	Our network has become highly centralized because the network platforms have this winner-takes-all
1:04.2	quality so that one monopoly after another emerges.
1:09.0	Amazon in online retail, Google in online search, Facebook and online networks, nothing
1:14.4	like that happened in the age of the printing press.
1:18.9	And these particular network platforms are engines of polarization.
1:25.2	They are set up to accentuate the existing divisions in our society.
1:32.0	I'm Matthew Khan and you're listening to the LawFair podcast March 27, 2018.
1:39.3	Social networks increasingly dominate public and private life.
1:43.4	Neil Ferguson argues in his new book The Square and the Tower, networks hierarchies and
1:49.2	the struggle for power that in our society, the computer plays the revolutionary role that
1:54.8	the printing press played 500 years ago and that throughout history, the powerful role of
1:59.8	networks has often been overlooked.
	...

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