Niall Ferguson The Square and the Tower

Niall Ferguson “The Square and the Tower”

There is the Square and the Tower; both are networks. The tower is the intellectual elite and the square is the general public in this metaphor. Ferguson’s findings are that there is a continuum of hierarchical structures as well as social networks. History repeats itself in many ways with the social media of today. Hierarchically organized family prevail, but then social networks are empowered to challenge the hierarchical order within each era.

We do in fact flip between the Org Chart of a company and the Network of Family in our own lives, according Niall Ferguson.

Think about Google as a crawler of the internet network that looks at the credibility of website: starting with sites such as BBC.co.uk and flows outwardly from there. History is hierarchical in the hands of government. History is typically written by the victors which is limiting. It should also be looked at through the diaries of the leaders of the past and how they leveraged networks to achieve their ends (Nazism and Communism in particular).

Niall Ferguson had to become a Network Scientist to Write this Book: it’s anthropology, engineering, interdisciplinary. But networks inherently are around the idea that birds of a feather flock together: we congregate into clusters. We drink the cool-aid.

Social Media Today

List of social network enablers ie. the technology that crazy uncles have used throughout history:

GuttenburgPrintingPress, CarolusNewspaper, NiepcePhotography, MacconiRadio, FarnsworthTelevision, Silicon ValleySocial Media

Global Community is Not Great:

Luther was wrong to believe that if everyone had a copy of the Bible, everything would be amazing according to Ferguson. The network is not a happy community; they start to polarize. Martin Luther -> social networks. Luther thought that we would get the priesthood of citizens. We don’t get a happy network, we get a viral tumult of ideas, according to Niall Ferguson. The polarization in the US; its Conservatives and Liberals is partly a function of networks.

  1. The point is that technology is not that big of a leap; Martin Luther certainly was an innovative thinker. But we wouldn’t know it if he didn’t have a printing press.
  2. Facebook is a Smaller World Phenomenon: things spread more rapidly: the reformation spreads faster than in the renaissance, for example;
  3. Things Go Viral: is about the structure of the network. The network is as important as the meme.
    Witch crazes spread virally, equally crazy ideas go viral. To deny there are witches = you are a witch would be an example of social pathology then and now. A cognitive error that is shareworthy (like it or not).
  4. Networks never sleep: they are complex system. Networks are bad at defense: the KGB penetrated the UK government in the 60s for example.
  5. Networks are not equal: there are few nodes that are equal. We can graph who knew who, it would be some of you are better connected than others.
  6. The Nazi and Bolshevik Parties should be studied to see ‘how were those networks structured.’ We need to understand Fascism and Communism from a networked perspective, according to Ferguson.
  7. The Power has moved from Washington to Silicon Valley> the Chinese have figured out how to extend it’s position; they can monitor and respond and has extensive collective behaviour: how do you align with a social credit score.

We need a new Guide for Totalitarianism:

China believe the world is going well ahead: there are constraints. They have the largest bourgeoisie in history in China: they can’t alter the needs of bourgeois: you desire property rights; and it can be arbitraged but Ferguson is going to watch for the Bourgeois revolution in China but so is Xi JinPing!

The Importance of Counter-Factual:

Counter-Factual should be explicit in history. The Hillary Clinton presidency would have meant gridlock and angry Alt right reactionaries, calls for impeachment and a Trump TV Network….

Populists don’t last long: it doesn’t deliver benefits to core supporters. And the president will fail to deliver according to Ferguson. Populism -> is not dead in Europe. Muslim’s will be 20% of Europe in the mid-21st century. Ferguson implies that there will be cultural conflicts as a result….

Attacking conspiracy theorists as a credible Historian is very difficult. Again, Ferguson is worried about his street credibility. The power of the Freemasons is smaller because it shows that they didn’t manage to prevent certain events from occurring. If you can’t have private conferences then you are not intellectually free, according to Ferguson.

The social mobility at the bottom of the pyramid. Basic Income is not a patch. The distribution of the medicaid is not going to work according to Ferguson. Distribution of spending is inefficient where as UBI might work.

China’s economic expansion: The US and China could still go to war. The Chinese don’t really care about a trade war. One Welt and one Asia. Chinese Welt-Politik is a reality, according to Ferguson.

US is susceptible to a cyber-attack: it’s a known fact: how large of a disruption could that be? Preparations must be made, according to Ferguson.

Ferguson on Trump and Advertising, FacePalm!

  • Ferguson is partisan on Trump and he knows it. But he must protect his credibility amongst fellow academics (partisan to a greater degree then one would hope). Facebook and Twitter are what caused Trump to win? The single causal variable? The leading variable even? Behold, you know you are are being sold something when the salesperson is claiming a single variable has caused the outcome. Facebook was a variable but to be true data scientist, we have to query this assertion. Why, because the +75,000 votes across the counties that Trump won in the various swing states were spread out and you have to assume that all 75,000 changed from Hilary to Trump because of something their crazy (Russian) uncle wrote on their FB or Twitter feed that inspired those critical few to Trump’s camp. Hindsight is a revisionist’s dream; we tend to think things were inevitable AFTER an election when before they were uncertain…because they were, folks. Predicting the future is extremely difficult. We only see the history that happened, not the trillions of event branches that elapse that could have just as easily happened, such as a Clinton victory.
  • Ferguson claims that Trump would never have won without Facebook sharing and advertising? This is a totally clueless claim, from someone who probably hasn’t advertised on Facebook, because the power of Facebook advertising to shift opinion is overstated by people who never use it….earned media is perhaps a term Ferguson is not familiar with at all? Trump had massive what-bat-shit-thing-is-he-going-to-say-next also known as earned media. Absent Twitter, Trump would have not had the reach for sure but Twitter exists, alas, and Trump has not be banned from it. Absent Facebook ads, I’m more dubious….because Facebook is highly overrated as a place to change minds rather then a place to re-enforce minds (hard to know per person in either case).
  • Facebook is not the cat’s meow solution for advertising effectively, it’s an improvement but not a gold standard in 2016 or ’18. For example, if you see an ad on Facebook for Coca-Cola BUT you were thinking of buying a Coca-Cola before you see that ad; how do we really know the ad caused the Coca-Cola purchase that you make after seeing the ad? We don’t. Same if you didn’t want a Coca-Cola, saw the ad and then went and bought a Coca-Cola, the ad may have changed your mind subconsciously or consciously or maybe something else happened between the ad exposure and the decision to buy Coca-Cola! We can’t know either way without direct access to your brain at the point of purchase. If we could know it, the person who invented that technology would be a billionaire in very short order**.
  • The same problem applies with an ad for Trump or Brexit, Facebook facilitates echo-chambers where people are already interested in Trump or Coca-Cola or Brexit. It doesn’t mean Facebook shaped that interest; it only means that Facebook is trying to generate revenue off of advertisers who don’t know which people will convert but will spend the money to get awareness at least as a baseline. Facebook is trying to convince social scientists that their platform is amazing because it captures data better than a billboard BECAUSE it is in Facebook’s interest to claim it is the cat’s meow.  Human beings consistently screw up your marketing experiment by having agency/choice. If you believe an ad can switch opinion in the subset of the population that was voting for Hillary but saw the ad and switched to Trump then you should make that rather nuanced case. It’s a rather narrow pool of people effected which also implies THEY, the Russians (a country with the GDP of a tiny country indeed), KNEW the exact 75K people in question which is incredible. I guess you could say a larger pool was targeted and only 75K mattered in the end, fine but how could you believe that it was on the basis of an ad on Facebook alone? There were surely other factors that are inputted into a voter’s decision, therefore, you have then accept that other factors impacted the 75K which invalidates your central claim that Russia won the election.
  • What’s interesting about Ferguson is that over the course of the book tour, every interviewer wants his thoughts on Trump. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Ferguson is disingenuous because he is evidently preoccupied with what other people think of him and his clout amongst academics would be damaged if he said anything positive about Trump’s ability to tap into the Square. And most people are emotional rather than rational in political matters because they are passionate without a post-ideological framework…another billion dollar value technology yet to be invented. Academia is so partisan that people aren’t intellectually free to explore counter-arguments in some sense. In these interviews, Ferguson goes for “Trump is the devil, now let’s get drinks in the history department kitchen or  Pompette (a upscale restaurant in Oxford)!” Of course, even anything I write here could be misconstrued. I’m a political scientist, trying to maintain objectivity and independence. Oh, and I am not an American citizen so I have no say.
  • **Zuckerberg is a billionaire because eye balls are valuable in and of themselves. Advertising does work BUT we don’t know in which instances. All you need is 1 person out of 1000 to get an Return on your Investment in some situations. There are definitely examples of direct marketing where you see a product on Facebook and then order it immediately in the moment, but that’s very very rare 0.01% of the time. Despite the rarity, advertisers spend billions on platforms like Facebook because there are many eyeballs visiting that site ie. brand awareness is mixed in with direct marketing. And Facebook wants you to believe they are the signal and not the noise. 

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