Review: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a truly The Big Picture Book. It takes seemingly impossible task - to cover all the major events of the humankind in 500 pages. And it does it surprisingly well - focusing on what has mattered most to humans and the planet, with the good dose of humour and controversy.

Harari makes some unexpected arguments that really make you think and consider history and present. What a sheer intelligence!

He starts with how humans became so special compared to other animals and how big of a role domestication of fire has played in it. Then came the collective myths and collective imagination which later gave birth to larger communities, trade, states, even empires.

A very intriguing is Harari's argument that the varied life of hunters-gatherers was not necessarily all that bad compared to the miserable and dull life of "most of the peasant, shepherds, labourers and office clerks who followed in their footsteps". He argues that it is not humans who domesticated wheat. It really domesticated us - meaning that humans have done all they could to make wheat (or other selected types of plants we use for food) survive and thrive.

Another interesting and sad paradox:

"Domesticated chickens and cattle may well be an evolutionary success story, but they are also among the most miserable creatures that every lived. The domestication of animals was founded on a series of brutal practices that only became crueller."

Harari then breaks the process of internationalisation and globalisation into three elements behind it: trade and capitalism, empires and universal religions. He describes the role all three have played in unification of the humankind, with both good and bad sides related to it.

Scientific Revolution is given a separate large role in the book:

"The Scientific Revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has been above all a revolution of ignorance: the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions."

Science has fuelled both trade and empires - and vice versa. It both has given humankind countless technological, geographical and biological discoveries, but also massive slave trade between Europe, Africa and America and breakdown of the role of traditional families and communities.

Good writing, good examples, intelligent humour, well-weighted arguments - it was an enjoyable reading I can recommend to anyone.

Review: This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The long-term cybersecurity journalist from the New York Times writes her account of how the area of cyberespionage and cyberwar has evolved in the recent decades.

It really sheds the lights on how state and state-affiliated actors exploit vulnerabilities (so-called zero-days) in software to spy and inflict damages on those they don't like. Something previously unknown to me was the detailed description of how the global market for vulnerabilities works - where hackers can sell their hacks to someone who wants to exploit them before anyone else gets to know (and is able to patch the problems). A software vulnerability can cost thousands dollars if it is a buggy and not very significant software - or tens of millions dollars if it is a closed and well-guarded environment such as Apple.

The story of NSA and revelations by Snowden are also well described. The main problem with NSA is arguably that it found and bought vulnerabilities in software used by millions across the globe - without saying anything to its vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle, Google and others (in order to preserve its advantage towards foes). However, not-so-nice state actors have eventually learnt about these vulnerabilities too - and have inflicted damages on many businesses and have stolen national secrets around many places.

The inner world of cybersecurity specialists and hackers is interestingly depicted - how has the industry come to be and how has it developed.

As for the disadvantages of the book, there are unfortunately several of them. For the first, I would have liked to read somewhat more technical accounts of how the things have worked (and have been broken) in cybersecurity domain - instead of the author's numerous personal stories of her mingling with hackers. The book is often bogged down in the U.S politics and administrative relations and is somewhat too long. Alarmist repetitions about the nuclear plants and hospitals being wired to the World Wide Web get annoying when reading them every 50th page or so.

Still, it is an eye-opening insight depicting the global cyberthreats and cyberbattles of 2000s-2020s.