Let's read #2 together. A selection of interesting books about IT and not only

Hello.

The first selection of books about technology, the corporate world and just interesting phenomena was accepted

you with warmth.So let me present the second selection in a row, as well as the “Reading Together” section, in which I will list the books I have read, both those that caused extremely positive emotions and negative ones. The second is important as a caveat, you may be saving your time for something really worthwhile. Go!

Rem Koolhaas, "New York is crazy"
Malcolm Gladwell, Bomber Mafia
Martin Buckhardt, “A Brief History of Digitalization”
Dmitry Zimin, “From two to…”
Thomas Hein, "Total Packing"
Vaclav Smil, "Numbers don't lie"
James Lovelock, Novatzen: The Coming Age of Superintelligence
Daniil Turovsky, “Invasion. A Brief History of Russian Hackers”
Tripp Mickle, “After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul”
That's it... almost everything.

Rem Koolhaas, "New York is crazy"

An amazing book that was written in the 70s, butIt seems like it just showed up yesterday. Rem Koolhaas is an amazing storyteller, he dissects the history of Manhattan and what ideas were put into its architecture, oddly enough, this is the history of technology. No, not at all the appearance of an elevator, without which high-rise construction was impossible, although there are also a couple of lines about this in the book.

I was struck by the development history of Coney Island,which today does not give the impression of something like that. It turns out that it was here that huge amusement parks arose that competed with each other. You read a book, and you get the feeling that you could safely call it one of the wonders of the world - huge parks in which mechanical horses carried riders along the coast. They reproduced the fire and immediately extinguished it. In the evenings, thousands of light bulbs adorned the silhouettes of the towers, and a ghost town appeared out of nowhere. Night bathing by the light of electric lamps became popular with the public, as well as various attractions, where men and women erased the distance between the sexes that existed in society. An unimaginable place that appears on the pages of the book.

How do you like the idea that one of the developersinstalled a searchlight with the colors of the lighthouse to make ships go astray and crash in the bay? This was also a kind of entertainment (the disaster did not happen, but in theory this could happen). Later, the same person would invest in the Chrysler Building and install a spotlight on the roof of the building, and the idea came from there.

Many illustrations, descriptions of scams and those ideaswhich pervaded the city. How he began to reach up to fill the space as much as possible, and what laws limited this growth (for the first time he put in his head how the law on air influenced the appearance of buildings).

This book fills me with excitement.Lots of ideas, very well shown the impact of technology on the city and what people dreamed about. Surprisingly, our dreams are about the same regardless of time, only the resources available to us differ. So I wholeheartedly recommend this book to you, it is well written and extremely interesting.

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Malcolm Gladwell, Bomber Mafia

I'm sure you know Gladwell, or at leastat least heard about his research. For example, the 10,000 hour rule to gain experience in a field comes from one of his books. Usually Gladwell's books are about psychology and how it affects our lives, partly business. In The Bomber Mafia, he reveals himself as a fan of the history of military aviation, talks about his hobby through the description of the strategy followed by the US Air Force during World War II and beyond.

Enthusiasts from aviation, which was calledbomber mafia, they believed that wars should be less bloody, and pinpoint bombings could cause irreparable damage to the enemy, destroy his ability to produce weapons. The idea sounded very good and was tested against Germany, the goal was factories producing bearings for various equipment, and some other goals. The imperfection of sights, the lack of smart bombs - all this made it impossible to complete the task. Disappointment with the approach of the bomber mafia grew, especially since aviation losses were always maximum.

The Air Force command is beginning to lean towards the fact thatThe task of aviation is not only to destroy real targets, but also to intimidate the enemy, by analogy with the bombing of Dresden, which destroyed the city, in fact wiped it off the face of the earth. The commander of the US Air Force against Japan, General Curtis LeMay, decided to stick to the tactics of intimidating the population, the more victims and destruction, the better. Shortly before that, the US Air Force had napalm, burning everything to the ground. We remember the use of these weapons in Vietnam, but for the first time they were used en masse against Japan.

The first test of the pen took place on February 3, 1945against the city of Kobe, napalm and carpet bombing of residential areas. Already on February 23, Tokyo became the target, 179 bombers are allocated for the attack, they bombard the city with bombs, but this is only a rehearsal for the subsequent attack from March 9 to 10. Empirically, it was found that it is most effective for the bombers to fly in three lines, the bombs being dropped every fifteen meters.

Workers bombed in Tokyoquarters, places where poor people lived - a lot of wooden buildings, an instantly spreading fire that cannot be stopped. The bombing of Tokyo went down in history as the most destructive of those carried out with the help of conventional weapons, killing 80 to 100 thousand people. For comparison, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima claimed the lives of 90 to 160 thousand people, Nagasaki - from 60 to 80 thousand people.

No military targets by these bombardmentswere not achieved, and Curtis LeMay admitted after the war: “I think if we had lost the war, then I would have been tried as a war criminal.” It was then that the United States approved the strategy of mass destruction of ordinary people on enemy territory and adheres to it today, when they switched to smart weapons, which should be selective, but, alas, are not used at all. Read The Drone Theory by Shamai, recommended this book in the first selection, it will complement Gladwell well.

Martin Buckhardt, “A Brief History of Digitalization”

A certain simplification touched everything, andwhole series of "books for fools" have appeared, in which certain concepts are briefly stated. This book can hardly be placed in the same class, although it is more of a summary of lectures on the development of digital technologies, which touches on looms, the awareness of electricity and the first experiments with it. In a word, the story goes from the past to the present, many milestones of history are known, something is forgotten by me personally. Almost 200 pages, very simple and understandable text, which gives an immersion in the topic. The feeling that you have been enriched with knowledge will not arise after this book, but as an excursion into the history of digitalization, the book is useful. At the very least, it can become an impetus for the study of certain issues. Usually they write about such books “for children of senior school age”, although in our time there is no age limit here, both old and young can read a book.

Inside the enumeration of events, people whoinfluenced the development of technology (Watson from IBM was amused by the fact that I forgot a lot about him and the book reminded me, it echoes well the death of the medical data collection project). In a word, read if you are interested in quickly and effectively remembering the main milestones, and at the same time outline for yourself what you want to know in detail. But you can ignore the book, you won’t lose anything from it if you think you remember the history of technology.

Dmitry Zimin, “From two to…”

Large, fairly colorful founder's bookVimpelcom Dmitry Zimin. This is the second edition with added photos and slightly expanded information. The first half of the book is about Dmitry Zimin's youth, these are memories of students, family and friends. The second half of the book is about how VimpelCom (Beeline) came into being, what problems there were and why Zimin left the company, and at the same time sold part of it. Of course, the second part of the story was of the greatest interest to me, at that time I witnessed many events, and a look from the inside gives a very good idea of what was happening and what a serious struggle unfolded in the Russian market.

This is evidence of the changes thathappened overnight, after the appearance of the cellular communication market. How Beeline grew from a network of 600 subscribers to a huge company spanning more than one country. Lots of unique documents, such as internal letters from VimpelCom, which were created at the time when the first equipment appeared. About the accidents that haunted the company and could put an end to it. To better understand that time and the decisions that were made, it is worth reading this book. Reads easily, quickly, without hesitation. To some extent, this is a set of disparate memories that may be of interest to everyone who works in the operator market. The rest, perhaps, the book will seem boring, about the affairs of bygone days. Of course, it will not bring practical benefits, but there are curious moments in it.

Thomas Hein, "Total Packing"

Few books can be said to havefall in love, they are so well written. In this selection, Rem Koolhaas' New York City is such a book, but Total Packaging could well compete with it.

Annotation for one paragraph.The text is about how we changed along with the ability to store goods and food, how objects transformed and made life easier for us. Generously flavored with a description of social changes, the book gives a look at our recent past and makes you fall in love with the present. It turned out dry and not very interesting, but I even wrote a separate text about this book, as it deserves it.

Books. Thomas Hein, "Total Packing"

How packaging has changed product marketing and become a value in its own right. An amazing book, simple and profound at the same time.

Vaclav Smil, "Numbers don't lie"

Several times I came across articles by Vaclav Smil,he writes for IEEE Spectrum, so he decided to purchase the book in the form of a collection of various articles, united thematically. In the 90s, the Reader's Digest magazine appeared in Russia, the format was new for the Soviet person, but he bribed. Now there is no such novelty, but short stories on various topics, something to think about, always attract attention.

Already on the cover we are lured by what is inside 71fact and each of them is important for understanding everything in the world. True, in this phrase only the number of articles that the collection has absorbed. Do not think that I am scolding the book, rather I am saying that some articles are funny, some are deep, but they definitely do not pull on the title of fundamental knowledge that will change your ideas about the world. For example, comparing diesel engines and gasoline engines is a kind of common place, something that most people know about to one degree or another.

On the other hand, I liked the fact that you cantry on this or that statistics for our country, look at child mortality or the birth rate, compare with other countries and draw a conclusion about the country's economy. Given that Vaclav Smil left the Czech Republic after the Prague events, he does not feel any nostalgia for the times of the USSR, however, he does not have warm feelings for Russia either. But following his own methodology, which is described from the first pages of the book, you get amazing results - it turns out that the economy has been strengthening for the last twenty years, and all indirect signs point to this. It turned out involuntarily, but the result is all the more interesting. The numbers don't lie. Another thing is that people try to give them other meanings.

The book is small and easy to readswallow in one or two evenings at most. I was curious about the note on how long empires live, for some reason the United States did not consider it as such, because otherwise it would be necessary to draw a disappointing conclusion about the short-term prospects of the state. I liked the book because it unobtrusively and easily gives a reason to turn to figures, look for facts and agree or, on the contrary, object to the author. And so, the book turned out to be good at least, it makes you think.

James Lovelock, Novatzen: The Coming Age of Superintelligence

I love books that make you think andconsider different futures. I don't like unequivocal dreams about the future, where by default it is assumed that technology will be good, and people will remain at the top of the food chain. Why should it be? There are no prerequisites for this, except for our belief in our exclusive chosenness.

James Lovelock believes that the Earth is onean organism with its own principles of regulation, which you and I cannot always realize and understand. The idea of the book is that sooner or later we will create cyborgs, if the majority wants it or not. Organisms that will combine living and non-living tissues, but the main distinguishing feature for them will be that they will think much faster than us. And here is born not the most obvious idea: an organism thinking at a different speed can go through evolutionary development much faster than we need. Whether we like it or not, it will become their competitive advantage.

The idea that cyborgs as a different species would wantto enslave humanity or completely destroy it seems utopian to Lovelock, he acts as a supporter of coexistence, when it simply does not make sense for us to share something, we will live in different ecological niches. And given the different speed of development, at some point we will become alien to each other, we may not have anything to talk about. It is impossible to believe that in this case cyborgs will be subordinate to a person, remain dependent.

Here is a quote from the book:“One question haunts me: how thoroughly will cyborgs live in the quantum world? Of course, we already live in the quantum world, the world of infinitesimal quantities, which we have had a look at, but have not yet comprehended, because it does not agree with our step-by-step logic. Curiously, physicists, with the exception of Einstein, do not seem to be bothered by their inability to explain quantum theory. In his lecture, Richard Feynman, the greatest physicist of the second half of the 20th century, drew diagrams describing the dynamical behavior of elementary particles, taking another step towards what seems to be an explanation of the quantum world. However, he ended his lecture with the words: “Anyone who says that he understands quantum theory most likely does not understand it.”

An easy-to-read book that you canread in an evening or measuredly in a few days, distracted by reflections. The book gave me another idea, that at some point humanity or our electronic descendants might refuse to store any sort of tool-making information. Everything will depend on the type of task and the speed of its solution, which will be available for computers of the future. Why store a solution when you can quickly and cheaply replicate it when you need it? The concept of momentary calculations will become one of the driving forces for the possible colonization of other worlds. In addition to dragging our past with us, we are more likely to drag algorithms of how we can solve certain problems.

The book is not very entertaining, but it allows you to strain your brains and discuss in absentia with the author about the problems of our existence. So I will definitely write it down as useful and interesting.

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Daniil Turovsky, “Invasion. A Brief History of Russian Hackers”

Not all of us talk about good books, we need tomention the bad ones, but this book is frankly bad. In it, the author is engaged in myth-making, contradicts logic and himself, invents “facts” to squeeze them into his picture of the world. Superficial and very stupid book, which is definitely not worth wasting time on.

The book is so bad that just by quotingabsurdity, wrote a whole text about it, if you wish, you can read it. I wanted to include a small text in "Spikers", but it turned out to be a full-fledged article. At least in some way the book evoked emotions, albeit negative ones.

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About Russian hackers - a book filled with fiction, myths and devoid of horizons, and at the same time common sense. A funny read with a lot of inconsistencies.

Tripp Mickle, “After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul”

One of the books that attract by defaultattention, since it is about Apple and inside there are a lot of details about how the company works, what are the conflicts of top managers, and this is not at all a combed success story. Haven't read the book, but added it to my reading list! You have the opportunity to read one chapter from this book, we have a translation, read the text, it is about Jonathan Quince and his conflict with Tim Cook, it is read in one breath.

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That's it... almost everything.

I think you're guaranteed to be able to find somethingfor yourself in this collection. One way or another, the books intersect with the theme of technology, stories of people, and we can say that they are in our profile. But in the end, I want to recommend one book that has nothing to do with technology, Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novel In the Line of Fire.

The novel is built around the events of the civil war inSpain, in which the conflict between the fascists and the Republicans is shown through the lives of ordinary people who clashed in a fight on a small bridgehead by the river. An everyday description of a war in which there are winners and losers, but with each page the line between them is erased. Spaniards fight against Spaniards, ideology against ideology, and many people just want to live and nothing else.

The story is fictional but beautifully written.read in one breath. I constantly caught myself thinking that I was comparing this book in mood (not in essence, which is very important!) With Yuri Bondarev, “Battalions ask for fire”. With Bondarev, the history of the springboard is somewhat similar, but the main thing is the mood that the book conveys. Roman Reverte is chic, so I recommend it with a pure soul.

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