This three-part documentary series Niall Ferguson’s Networld provides unique insights from history into the viral spread of ideas and how social media’s technology is a battlefield of the future
Niall Ferguson’s Networld: Episode 1 – “Disruption”
Host Niall Ferguson compares the great network revolution of our time with one that happened 500 years ago – the Protestant Reformation. With the help of experts in network theory and precedents from history, Ferguson argues that the printing press had similar consequences for 16th-and 17th-century Europe as the personal computer and the Internet have for the world since the 20th century, leading to polarization and the dissemination of fake news.
Niall Ferguson’s Networld: Episode 2 – “Winner Takes All”
By looking at the history of the Victorian telegraph pioneers and the rival computer networks of the Cold War, host Niall Ferguson tells the story of how a decentralized, not-for-profit worldwide web shape-shifted to become a highly profitable network controlled by a tiny elite selling our attention for billions of dollars to the world’s advertisers. The key lesson is that in the economics of networks, the winner takes all – and once the network is under central control, that winner has the potential to be Big Brother.
Niall Ferguson’s Networld: Episode 3 – “Networld War”
Host Niall Ferguson focuses on the geopolitics of our interconnected world. Looking at the fight against terrorist networks in Iraq, Russian attempts to divide Americans through social media and the rise of an Internet-powered surveillance state in China, Ferguson shows how our democracies are under threat from outside forces that seek to weaponize the social networks that we invented. He warns of a coming “networld war” that the West may not win.