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Yuval Noah Harari, author of the best-selling book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humanity, returns with… “Nexus: a brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to artificial intelligence” (Random house). Study how intelligence has shaped and controlled civilizations throughout history, and the role of artificial intelligence in changing society, economics, and politics.
Read an excerpt below.
“The Association” by Yuval Noah Harari
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What is the information?
It is always difficult to define the basic concepts. And since they are the foundation of everything that follows, they themselves seem to have no foundation of their own. Physicists have difficulty defining matter and energy, biologists have difficulty defining life, and philosophers have difficulty defining reality. Many philosophers, biologists, and even some physicists increasingly see information as a fundamental component of reality, more primitive than matter and energy. It is not surprising that there are many disagreements about how to define information and how it relates to the development of life or to basic ideas in physics such as entropy, the laws of thermodynamics, and the quantum uncertainty principle. This book will not attempt to resolve—or even explain—these controversies, nor will it provide a universal definition of information that applies to physics, biology, and all other fields of knowledge. As it is a historical work that studies the past and future development of human societies, it will focus on the definition of information and its role in history.
In everyday use, “information” is associated with man-made symbols, such as spoken or written words. Take, for example, the story of Sher Ami and the Lost Battalion. In October 1918, as American infantry forces fought to liberate northern France from the Germans, a battalion of more than five hundred American soldiers became trapped behind enemy lines. The American artillery, attempting to provide covering fire, mistook their location and dropped the bombardment directly on them. The battalion commander, Major Charles Whittlesey, urgently needed to inform headquarters of their true location, but no messenger could break through the German line. According to several accounts, as a last resort, Whittlesey turned to Shir Ami, the army carrier pigeon. “We are on parallel route (sic) 276.4,” Whittlesey wrote on a small sheet of paper. Our artillery is launching a barrage of missiles directly at us. For the love of God, stop it. The paper was inserted into a box on Sher Ami's right leg and the bird was released into the air. “We knew without a doubt that this was our last chance,” one of the battalion's soldiers, Private John Neal, recalled years later. If that lonely and frightened pigeon cannot find its loft, our fate is sealed.”
Witnesses later described how Cher Ami flew into intense German fire. A shell exploded just below the bird, killing five men and seriously wounding the pigeon. Shrapnel tore through Cher Ami's chest, leaving her right leg hanging by the tendon. But he did it. The wounded pigeon flew the twenty-five miles to division headquarters in about forty-five minutes, with the package containing the important message attached to the rest of its right leg. Although there is some debate over the exact details, it is clear that the American artillery modified its bombardment and the American counterattack saved the lost battalion. Cher Ami was treated by army doctors, sent to the United States as a heroine, and became the subject of numerous articles, stories, children's books, poems, and even films. The dove had no idea what information it was transmitting, but the symbols written in ink on the paper it carried helped save hundreds of men from death and captivity.
However, the information should not consist of man-made codes. According to the biblical flood myth, Noah knew that the waters had finally receded because the dove he sent from the ark returned with an olive branch in its mouth. God then placed the rainbow in the clouds as a heavenly record of his promise to never flood the earth again. Since then, doves, olive branches and rainbows have become iconic symbols of peace and tolerance. Things even beyond the rainbow can also be information. For astronomers, the shape and motion of galaxies provides important information about the history of the universe. For sailors, the North Star indicates the north direction. For astrologers, the stars are a cosmic text that transmits information about the future of human beings and entire societies.
Of course, defining something as “information” is a matter of perspective. An astronomer or astrologer may view the constellation Libra as “information,” but these distant stars are much more than a bulletin board to human observers. There may be an extraterrestrial civilization, completely unrelated to the information we gather about their habitat and the stories we tell about them. Likewise, a piece of paper with ink stains can be important information for an army unit, or dinner for a family of termites. Any object can be information or not. This makes it difficult to determine what the information is.
Information discrepancies played an important role in the annals of military espionage, when spies needed to transmit information surreptitiously. During World War I, northern France was not the only major battlefield. From 1915 to 1918, the British and Ottoman empires fought for control of the Middle East. After repelling an Ottoman attack on the Sinai Peninsula and the Suez Canal, the British in turn invaded the Ottoman Empire, but were held at bay until October 1917 by a fortified Ottoman line running from Beersheba to Gaza. British attempts to achieve a breakthrough were repulsed in the First Battle of Gaza (26 March 1917) and the Second Battle of Gaza (17–19 April 1917). Meanwhile, pro-British Jews living in Palestine created a spy network called NILI to inform the British about Ottoman troop movements. One method they developed to communicate with their British operators was shutters. Sarah Aaronson, one of the leaders of NILI, had a house overlooking the Mediterranean. They signaled British ships by closing or opening a particular shutter, according to a predetermined code. Clearly many people, including Ottoman soldiers, could see the shutter, but no one other than the NILI agents and their British operators understood that this was vital military information. So when is a shutter just a shutter and when is it information?
The Ottomans were eventually able to capture NILI's spy network, in part due to a strange mishap. In addition to shutters, Nellie used carrier pigeons to transmit coded messages. On September 3, 1917, one of the pigeons deviated from its course and landed on the house of an Ottoman officer. The officer found the encrypted message but was unable to decode it. However, the dove itself was important information. Their presence indicated to the Ottomans the existence of a network of spies operating under their noses. As Marshall McLuhan said, the dove was the message. NILI agents learned of the pigeon's capture and immediately killed and buried all the remaining birds, as mere possession of carrier pigeons now became incriminating information. But the pigeon massacre did not save Nellie. Within a month, the spy network was exposed, several of its members were executed, and Sarah Aaronson committed suicide to avoid divulging NILI secrets under torture. When is a dove just a dove and when is it information?
It is clear, then, that information cannot be defined as specific types of physical objects. Anything (a star, a shutter, a dove) can be information in the right context. So what is the context that defines things as “information”? The naïve view of information says that things are defined as information in the context of the search for truth. Something is information if people use it to try to discover the truth. This view links the concept of information with the concept of truth and assumes that the main role of information is to represent reality. There is a reality “out there” and information is something that represents that reality and therefore we can use it to learn about reality. For example, the information Nelly provided to the British was intended to represent the reality of Ottoman troop movements. If the Ottomans concentrated ten thousand soldiers in Gaza – the center of their defenses – a piece of paper with symbols representing “Ten Thousand” and “Gaza” was important information that could help the British win the battle. On the other hand, if there were indeed twenty thousand Ottoman soldiers in Gaza, that piece of paper did not accurately represent reality and could lead the British to make a disastrous military mistake.
In other words, the naïve view says that information is an attempt to represent reality, and when this attempt is successful we call it truth. While this book approaches many issues from a naive perspective, it agrees that truth is an accurate representation of reality. But this book also argues that most information is not an attempt to represent reality and that what defines information is something else entirely. Most information in human society and other biological and physical systems represents nothing.
Extracted from the book “The Relationship” by Yuval Noah Harari. Copyright © 2024 Yuval Noah Harari. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without the written permission of the publisher.
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