INFORMATION – the bond of THE NETWORK

Individual pieces of information are the links of an information network and the bond of a cooperation network, that is, of various human social structures—religious, economic, military, and so on.
The term “network” can therefore be considered here in two aspects:

  1/  a network that connects individual, simple pieces of information into a shared context—complex information.
Complex information can create various stories, or in other words intersubjective realities, and all of them are the substance of our information network. Another term Professor Harari uses for an information network is a >>network of meanings<<. This second term allows one to detach oneself from the old associations connected with the concept of the information network. In other words, a network of meanings is the broadest informational structure formed by all the information contained within it. By connecting many simple pieces of information into a shared context, people, among other things, create intersubjective realities such as religion, the state, or the economy.

  2/  intersubjective realities can be the foundation of various cooperation networks.
The information network indirectly enables many people to cooperate through the intersubjective realities existing within it. People who form a cooperation network can divide tasks among themselves, which gives them far greater developmental possibilities than if they worked separately. In a cooperation network, each individual, by adapting to the functioning of the whole network, completely changes the way they function—sapiens becomes, as it were, a new organism—perhaps this is precisely the essence of our humanity.
The size and type of the network in which we live defines us as human beings.
Information is the social bond that connects people, but at the same time it also divides them into separate groups. For example, it differentiates them according to national belonging or religious faith.

 When defining the concept of information, one can give it a very broad scope. Differentiating information into various forms unfortunately complicates the definition.
I would put it this way:

 1/ In order to cooperate, our distant ancestors exchanged information with one another, for example in order to hunt a deer or defend themselves against a bear. Such a basic exchange of information later also enabled them to create shared imaginings. While simple cooperation networks can also be formed by wolf packs, the creation of shared imaginings is already a specifically human domain.
  2/ Only humans create such a rich language in which stories can be told about our imaginings.
For this purpose, we create concepts referring to intersubjective entities, that is, entities existing only in our imagination.
These fictions initiate the creation of a new, much more developed cooperation network, based on a collectively imagined story—for example, the spirits of ancestors. Such a network may include a large number of people, for example an entire tribe or nation. The shared story that forms the basis of this new, extensive cooperation network may be called an intersubjective reality. On the basis of language containing abstract concepts, people created—at first—simple information networks.
  3/ As time passes, people create more and more shared stories, that is, intersubjective realities.
Examples of intersubjective entities, which in turn are the foundations of various intersubjective realities, include: God, nation, money, law. Of course, as communities expanded, particular intersubjective realities ceased to encompass the whole community—for example, in Poland not everyone is Catholic and not everyone is of Polish nationality. Even by imposing religious order or statehood by force, not everyone can be compelled to accept an intersubjective reality. For example, the Irish did not want a common state with the English, and some Catalans cannot reconcile themselves to the lack of state independence from Spain. Some intersubjective realities unite us, while others divide us.
In the case of economic cooperation, it has almost been possible to create a global cooperation network based on payment with money, that is, on a shared intersubjective reality we call the economy. Yet we are still divided by state and national belonging, because we are separated by intersubjective realities that have shaped the political structures of our societies. 

  All intersubjective realities created by human beings form a common multilevel information network.
Within it there are states, money, gods, and laws, as well as many other things. Such a multilevel information network may in the future, though it need not, create a multilevel global cooperation network, that is, its maximum form.
4/ A multilevel information network is the place where collective consciousness is formed. Every human being is under its enormous influence.

In this way, I describe the function of information both in the cooperation network and in the information network, although my approach is narrower because it does not take into account various forms of information—for example, music and horoscopes.

I understand Professor Harari’s statement above as follows → the primary reason for the emergence of the information network is collective cooperation, which is why the information network always simultaneously contains the cooperation network. In this aspect, we may speak of the dual function of information.
The basic feature of information is bringing people together into a society in which individuals cooperate with one another, and only sometimes does information also describe reality. 

a description of reality based on scientific knowledge and a description based on conjectures and beliefs.

Thanks to this, intersubjective realities could become increasingly elaborate and complex.
At present, electronic documents completely remove any limits on the creation of new realities—which is good news on the one hand, but unfortunately it also has a negative side, because the quantity and scale of the intersubjective realities created by society (and now also assisted by AI algorithms) have begun to exceed the intellectual capacities of a human being as an individual.
What until now an educated person should have known—that is, kept under control—we can now know only as a group, which means that only by cooperating with one another can we control the particular intersubjective realities created by our species, such as the reality constituted by law, the economic reality, or the political reality.

A flood of information, however, is not a particularly useful tool for explaining objective reality, but rather for creating new intersubjective realities that exert a very strong influence on human collectives.
Creating an intersubjective reality that refers to many truths about different aspects of reality is far more difficult than creating an intersubjective reality based on conjecture and wishful thinking. Even if we print a difficult truth in thousands of copies, but no one is able to understand it, it will remain for society a truth still undiscovered—one that has no impact on our network of cooperation.
Printing, as a technology for disseminating information, can convey more complex and difficult content than speech, but it cannot make that content more understandable for someone unprepared to receive it.
To explain complex and difficult truths—besides the systematization of complex information—we also need a technology that facilitates reception, such as a documentary film or multimedia information.

What matters to me is perceiving religion and bureaucracy as information technologies. Religion is meant to solve the problem of instability in the perception of reality, while bureaucracy is meant to overcome the limitations of human memory.   
RELIGION allows us to create complete intersubjective realities in which everything has its explanation. By contrast, BUREAUCRACY allows us to expand these realities to gigantic proportions.

In reality, the speed of dissemination and the growth in the quantity of information make truth less accessible to the general public.
Truth and wisdom depend on the way information is connected and on its quality, not on the quantity of information in circulation. At present, the growth in the quantity of information and in the speed of its dissemination does not improve our information network but seriously disrupts its functioning.

Yet I have serious doubts as to whether, in contemporary times, our educational systems and existing media platforms are sufficient to ensure meaningfulness in our conversations. I believe that our current system of mass communication is an inefficient mechanism. Important information shared within our information network does not reach a sufficiently large group of recipients “in time” for society to be able to conduct a meaningful debate. At the same time, we are flooded with unnecessary or even harmful information (this also applies to education), which makes it difficult for us to make rational decisions together. By the phrase >do not reach in time< I mean that such information does not influence the views of a large part of society at the moment when we make collective decisions, such as electing the authorities of the state.

Distributed networks are generally open to allowing new opinions, ideas, and demands into circulation, ones that arise under the influence of new points of view.
This makes possible the reconstruction of the entire information network. Admitting new social groups into the network is connected with an increase in the number of points of view, and often also with the transformation of old ones or the appearance of new entities, and even of new intersubjective realities. Such a network may change rapidly on many levels at once.  
In a centralized network, no communication nodes independent of the center may exist, and therefore new nodes cannot arise either. The intersubjective entities created within it must strengthen the power of the central node, so they certainly will not lead to an information revolution, which could destabilize order in the network. Even through repression, the centralized network will strive at all costs to preserve the existing order.

I think regulations alone will not be enough, because many existing institutions require thorough reconstruction—from political power structures, through the media market, to the education system.
For such reconstruction to take place, new rational ideas must first appear in our network.

A computer network based on algorithms is the information technology of the twenty-first century.  
BIG DATA + AI, that is, infinitely vast databases supervised by artificial intelligence are replacing the previous bureaucratic system based on drawers full of printed documents.
Even the old technology of gathering paper documents already made it difficult for us humans to grasp all the data, although there used to be much less of it. At present, the enormous databases available to us are completely useless to an individual human being. Without group cooperation and without digital tools, we are unable to make use of them.

I hope that Integrated Active Information will restore their usefulness for each of us. Of course, I realize that no one is capable of following data on all problems from all areas of life, but that is not the point. It is enough that each person should be able to understand any problem they choose. In this way, we will recover—to a sufficient degree—control over our information network.

Empires, Churches, and corporations, in order to function, need information, yet they do not make it available to the ordinary person. Thousands of years ago, a division of data into two sets was invented—one set accessible to everyone, and another reserved for a small group of initiated decision-makers.
At present, in democratic states, such a division is an anachronism that blocks our information network.

The information network must above all produce social consensus, and in a distributed network such as democracy this will always be difficult. Consensus must be achieved within defined time frames, otherwise the network ceases to fulfill its task and society begins to act without common agreements.
Decisions on behalf of everyone are then made by the few.
Put differently, a distributed network turns into an increasingly centralized network.

If a global bond is to unite us, then information globalization is a necessity. Yet a single intersubjective reality will not unite all people into a harmoniously cooperating society, which means that the economy alone is not enough. We must find more such common stories that will unite us.

I am trying to find a basis for defining global principles and the long-term interests of humanity.
Perhaps a network based on the Synthetic Collective Intellect will enable the exchange of information necessary for this.

  Society itself first had to come into being, that is, a collective cooperating with one another, which gave the human species the power to dominate nature, and later also the power to discover truth about the world.
Sharing truth was a secondary effect of collective cooperation.  We are the dominant species on Earth thanks to cooperation, but without knowledge of the laws operating in the universe we would not have gotten very far.
 We need efficient information networks both because they enable a rapid growth of knowledge and because without them we cannot cooperate.
  Our information networks may be built on the foundations of fictional beliefs or on discovered truths about reality.
Across the millennia, it is evident that our beliefs change.
The truths we discover are not fixed either, because we are constantly studying reality and our descriptions of reality continually change.

  Both networks based on fiction and those based on truth create intersubjective realities, yet there is a fundamental difference between them.

 – In a network dominated by intersubjective realities built on many strong beliefs in fiction, our societies are deeply divided and find it difficult to reach understanding. The adherents of such intersubjective realities usually fiercely defend the >truth< resulting from their worldview. In such networks, mechanisms of self-correction are not well regarded, because a stable order of the world matters more within them than the search for objective truth. Unfortunately, without a rapid agreement on political, economic, or climate issues, humanity is threatened by various catastrophes. If we do not base our agreement on universal truth, but instead seek to conclude it only on the basis of intersubjective realities, we will not get very far.

 – Networks in which intersubjective realities built on universal truth dominate contain mechanisms of self-correction.

In the case of divergent views, it is possible to reach consensus fairly quickly. One need only check why our views differ → whether we know different data, whether we are taking into account only some scientific aspects, or whether we are looking at the problem from only one point of view.