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1-Page Summary of The Square and the Tower

Overview

Opening up a newspaper or switching on the TV can be overwhelming these days, as there are so many events happening in different parts of the world. The author makes it easier to understand all this chaos by showing how they’re connected through networks. People use technology to share information and spread ideas, especially in business settings.

In the age of Brexit and Trump, it seems like networks are everywhere. However, these networks have existed for a long time. Niall Ferguson shows how they’ve existed since Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1450.

Throughout history, networks have been important. They’ve led to changes in societies and helped promote new ideas. In the past, they were powered by technological innovation and spread new ideas like they do today.

The printing press created a network that changed Europe. The British empire expanded and built networks to spread their influence across the world. Donald Trump’s use of Twitter helped him beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

Big Idea #1: History is shaped by the push and pull of hierarchy and networks, two phenomena that share some basic traits.

Some people view history as a pyramid with kings and queens at the top. Others emphasize secret societies such as the Illuminati, who are pulling all the strings behind the scenes.

But can either of these models really explain the historical process? In fact, both hierarchies and networks have molded most of our history. While hierarchies have usually had the final say, networks have long played a vital role in driving historical change. Take the global economic networks that emerged with the advent of steamships and railways, or communication networks centered around telephones or the internet. And social networks have also played a key role in change. The French Revolution was facilitated by salons where different groups could meet to discuss their ideas.

Networks and hierarchies share many traits. They’re both made up of interconnected nodes, which are people, trading ports or family members. Homophily is a tendency that we have to connect with similar people.

We can be united with others when we share certain things, such as a common background or religion.

An example of this is the Bloomsbury group in early twentieth-century England. The members of this group were connected to each other through their shared ideas about art, life, sexuality and politics. They even married each other based on these connections. If you connect all the relationships between them with a line, it would look like a spiderweb.

For example, Virginia Woolf was married to Leonard Woolf but in love with Vita Sackville-West. The economist John Maynard Keynes was the hub of the network because he was connected to most other people.

Hierarchies work in the same way as networks. The difference is that all connections are directed from the top down, rather than horizontally.

Everyone is connected to the top of the pyramid, but there are fewer connections as you go down.

Networks and hierarchies are similar in some ways, but networks are more interconnected. We’ll look at how they differ and what makes them unique.

Big Idea #2: Networks are defined by key traits such as centrality, weak ties and brokers.

A network is a series of nodes. Some networks are more effective than others. In general, the more interconnected the nodes in a network, the better that network functions. We can understand the importance of different nodes by analyzing their relative centrality in a network. Degree centrality measures how many connections or relationships one person has with others. Betweenness centrality gauges how much information passes through a specific node (such as train stations). Lastly there’s closeness centrality which is about how many steps separate different nodes from one another (like commuters between stations).