The Tower & the Square

AI x Crypto (Part 1)

The Tower & the Square

In writing this piece, I kept coming back to themes from Niall Ferguson’s “The Square and the Tower” which traces the power dynamics between traditional hierarchies (the Tower) and networks (the Square) throughout history. While hierarchies have traditionally been the dominant forms of organization, networks have played a crucial role in shaping societies, and their rise – the Enlightenment, the American & French Revolutions, the internet, etc – have often marked profound shifts in societal organization.

The 21st century is primed for a continued struggle: the state, the corporation, the elites vs. the network, the interwebs, the proles. The hierarchy and the hivemind. The Tower and the Square.

Much of post-cold war history has been a story of the rise of networks: globalization, markets, liberalism, the internet, social media, crypto. Perhaps most symbolically, in 2021 we witnessed a social network suspend the sitting President of the United States.

However, recent years have seen the Tower reassert itself. Geopolitics are once again resurgent over economic efficiency. The tools which promised open communication have been trained inward, honing Orwellian-level surveillance of our every click. The “open internet” has fragmented into four increasingly extractive and censorious “walled gardens”.

History chronicle’s countless pendulum swings between centralization and decentralization, networks and hierarchies, anarchy and autocrats, but this time feels different. With the rapid advances of artificial intelligence, perhaps the stakes have never been higher. We are witne