This is happening to be a very strange world in which we are living today. The understanding of this unique world is not completely ours; rather, we are looking at it through various prisms—one such prism or prison is what Yuval Noah Harari in his book “Nexus” called “The Silicon Curtain.”
Global Empires or Digital Camps
In today’s world, we all live inside a huge digital network. This means that powerful technology companies and powerful countries are shaping how we see the world. They control information, communication, and even our beliefs. The question is simple but serious: Will this create one global empire or will it divide the world into many digital camps?
The Covid-19 pandemic and earlier diseases like AIDS showed how fast information travels. News channels like Al Jazeera in Qatar or American networks in the USA, UK, France, and Germany influence millions of people every minute. At the same time, digital empires—Facebook, Twitter, Google, Alibaba, Baidu—connect billions of users. Platforms like TikTok show how data flows from one continent to another without borders.
Technology competitions, such as the ImageNet Visual Recognition Challenge, pushed companies to build extremely strong AI systems. But with this power came a new problem: Data Colonialism. Today, instead of taking land, big companies take our data. Our clicks, searches, and videos become resources for them.
In many places—from the Eastern Mediterranean to Egypt and Iraq—people now live in both an online world and an offline world. This creates a “web to cocoon” effect. The internet can bring people together, but algorithms can also trap us inside our own beliefs.
There is also a deep cultural struggle. Western digital spheres, especially from America, spread ideas across the world. At the same time, the idea of a “global mind” rises, where billions think together. But this also creates a split between mind and body, a very old philosophical issue found in Greek, Persian, and Manichaean traditions. People begin to live more in their screens than in their physical lives.
Ideas Have Always Changed The World
History reminds us that ideas have always changed the world. Protestants like Martin Luther challenged the sale of indulgences and shook Europe. Today, coding and cyber power may cause similar revolutions. A “code war” could turn into a hot war, with nuclear risks and cyber attacks. Countries are racing to build stronger digital armies.
Still, humans share a global bond. We are all Homo sapiens, shaped by globalism, migration, economics, and culture—from ancient stone-age tribes to great empires like the Ottomans. Wars such as the Second World War or the tensions between Russia and Ukraine show that history never stops moving. The only constant of history is change.
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