Skip to main content

Humans fuck up - book review

After the Israeli historian Harari educated us about our species and its origins in easy to read manner earlier this decade, a Brit followed up with a hilarious portrait of our uncanny ability to cock things up.

Humans - brief history of how we fucked it all up -  is a 2019 attempt by British journalist and storyteller Tom Phillips to lay bare the truth that we are not all that smart as cracked up to be.

Starting with a condensed table of contents that describes an ape falling off a tree 3.2 M years ago after probably jerking off and dying, the species went on to get to present state aka Wise Man (leaving that moniker in doubt) or Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

Contrast Yuval Harari's detailed investigations of historic records and some eye opening data points to Phillips' easy going hilarity, the latter was quite an entertaining read.

Indeed we as a species still deal with the consequences of what we now see in the rearview mirror of history.  Discovering agriculture, gasoline engines, smartphones et al to ultimately dying into extinction with artificially intelligent machines taking over natural stupidity.

Recommend this book for any transoceanic flight as it may help you ponder why you are on the plane seat in the first place.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

On the go(zay masta) in Japan again

Cool cat the Japanese are Tokyo at dusk  My second visit to this land of the rising sun after almost a decade. Back then clearly I was wet behind the ears product manager and likely didn’t pay attention to all (efficient) things Japanese. But today I did and of course continue to be impressed. It is as much the obvious stuff like on time travel that is both clean and comfortable and all that which makes it possible. The impressive landmark and landscapes that these humans have put together despite their cramped (or because of it) surroundings and precarious geological conditions could amaze a novice architect among us. But it’s also the little things that someone had to think about which have a phenomenal impact on day to day lives that make the Japanese stand apart. Below are few random examples- 1. Providing a very fine machined wooden toothpick in every packet of wooden chopsticks. The said chapsticks are simply set on the To Go counter of any food vendor/ convenience store wher...

Presumptive Society

Today's world is hyper connected.  I am not so sure what it means but you hear it a lot.  It is probably hyper but not sure how connected it is.  Sugar (fermented or not) is available in many ways than before and so getting hyper is easy.  It is probably more a threat than cocaine since it is sold legally. And what is this connected stuff?  Most people I encounter seem disconnected from reality.  So going back to this assumption that we are connected there are subtle and no so subtle instances of how brands and companies and middle men try to portray someone - A linkedin profile for somebody working for X years at a place advertises to the connected network that so and so is CELEBRATING X years @ Such and Such Inc. Do we know if (s)he is celebrating or cringing?  Perhaps a better way to portray will be - So and So LASTED X years @ such & such inc. Then it exhorts the readership to go ahead and congratulate them for this lasting effe...

Greasy Dra'ch'ma

With all the furor in the media around Greece for the past couple of years I thought it would be good to list all things Greek that people use in common parlance - 1. Some of us are familiar with Greek history as being where the world's largest organized scam was born - called the Olympics. At the time this courier delivered a message by running a large number of miles and that got converted into a spectator sport. Nobody thought about what this implied? Fedex does not use any of the marathon runners instead relying on bio diesel trucks so not sure where we went from courier delivery to extracting money for tickets to watch people balance themselves on a pommel horse - which by the way is quite different from a Trojan Horse - 2. which brings me to the next invention from Greek mythology that finds use today - except used in the computer virus arena. This innocuos program is accepted by a computer since it looks friendly only to unleash undesirable effects leading to loss of s...