# Quote — Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus

> During the Cold War, the Iron Curtain was in many places literally made of metal: barbed wire separated one country from another. Now the world is increasingly divided by the Silicon Curtain. The Silicon Curtain is made of code, and it passes through every smartphone, computer, and server in the world. The code on your smartphone determines on which side of the Silicon Curtain you live, which algorithms run your life, who controls your attention, and where your data flows.
>
> It is becoming difficult to access information across the Silicon Curtain, say between China and the United States, or between Russia and the EU. Moreover, the two sides are increasingly run on different digital networks, using different computer codes. Each sphere obeys different regulations and serves different purposes.

- Author: [Yuval Noah Harari](https://www.leafyquotes.com/yuval-noah-harari.md)
- Book: [Nexus](https://www.leafyquotes.com/yuval-noah-harari/nexus.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yuval_Noah_Harari#Nexus:_A_Brief_History_of_Information_Networks_from_the_Stone_Age_to_AI_(2024)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/yuval-noah-harari/nexus/during-the-cold

## More from this book

> Imagine a situation—in twenty years, say—when somebody in Beijing or San Francisco possesses the entire personal history of every politician, journalist, colonel, and CEO in your country: every text they ever sent, every web search they ever made, every illness they suffered, every sexual encounter they enjoyed, every joke they told, every bribe they took. Would you still be living in an independent country, or would you now be living in a data colony? What happens when your country finds itself utterly dependent on digital infrastructures and AI-powered systems over which it has no effective control?
>
> Such a situation can lead to a new kind of data colonialism in which control of data is used to dominate faraway colonies. Mastery of AI and data could also give the new empires control of people’s attention. As we have already discussed, in the 2010s American social media giants like Facebook and YouTube upended the politics of distant countries like Myanmar and Brazil in pursuit of profit. Future digital empires may do something similar for political interests.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/yuval-noah-harari/nexus/imagine-a-situation-in.md)

> Humans are organic beings who live by cyclical biological time. ... Even the money market respects these biological cycles. The New York Stock Exchange is open Monday to Friday, from 9:30 in the morning to 4:00 in the afternoon, and is closed on holidays like Independence Day and New Year’s Day. If a war erupts at 4:01 p.m. on a Friday, the market won’t react to it until Monday morning.
>
> In contrast, a network of computers can always be on. Computers are consequently pushing humans toward a new kind of existence in which we are always connected and always monitored. In some contexts, like health care, this could be a boon. In other contexts, like for citizens of totalitarian states, this could be a disaster. Even if the network is potentially benign, the very fact that it is always on might be damaging to organic entities like humans, because it will take away our opportunities to disconnect and relax. If an organism never has a chance to rest, it eventually collapses and dies. But how will we get a relentless network to slow down and allow us some breaks?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/yuval-noah-harari/nexus/humans-are-organic.md)