iGuerilla, by John Sutherland

In this mostly ridiculous book, John Sutherland details the things in this world that he hates and thinks we should all fear. That includes Muslims, Arabs, and Communists, amongst others. He tells us why these things are awful and why they’re getting worse (well, except for Communism, which is responsible for all the new bad stuff).

Sutherland's iGuerilla: Reshaping the Face of War in the 21st Century careens back and forth attempting to explain how technology is making the world a scary place, while comparing everything to the Fall of Rome or the Rise of Hitler or Pearl Harbor. Anything he doesn’t like is immediately compared to Hitler, and there is nothing bad said about that which he loves – the great countries of America and Israel.

The book is full of stupid and annoying metaphors, always completely overblown and often mixed with other imagery. His language is sneering, violent, and sensationalistic:

They are barbarous and yet tech-savvy denizens of the modern world. They resemble a schizophrenic cross between Attila the Hun and Mark Zuckerburg. (sic)

He thinks in terms of pure Good and Evil, and thinks all change is bad. In his world, the Cold War was good because at least he knew where he stood. Now everything is awful and getting worse, and it’s Russia’s fault for not being tough enough. His logic is overly simplistic, ignoring anything inconvenient.

iGuerilla is researched from Wikipedia, a number of low-brow or right-wing media outlets, and a scattering of reputable sources just for appearances. He also seems to be relying upon his fanciful memory of history class. The author seems fearful about technology and yet also largely ignorant, using ancient terminology like “cyberspace” that no self-respecting author of a book about technology would ever utter. He is vague in describing the threats that our “enemies” pose, but they involve computers.

In the end, this whole awful mess of a book is designed to instil fear in its reader. Yet, like the godawful right-wing news channels Sutherland appears to enjoy so much, his book is shallow, misleading, and woefully lacking in subtlety. Just read this abominable passage and I’m sure you’ll agree this is not a book I could in good conscience recommend:

There’s no shortage of enemies determined to strike Americans. We will face our Arminius just as Rome did...

…We no longer have the luxury of focusing on the very visible state dragon. We now face a snake pit filled with a myriad of non-state threats and their shady rogue state sponsors…

…They can attack the homeland although they aren’t an existential threat – yet. They aren’t toting nukes or superbugs – yet.

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, by Matt Ridley

I liked the sound of this book when I read its synopsis on Amazon and so I bought it a month ago. Indeed, I agree with the author in most respects and many of his arguments, I feel, are correct - the world is getting "better" in most measurable ways and when people talk about the doom and gloom of coming decades, they're typically misguided.

However, I found the author insufferable and struggled to reach the end of his book.



In The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley is writing from the perspective of the financial crisis. He obviously wrote this book as a reaction to the panic that was caused by that particular event. As such, he looks back through human history, nearly to the dawn of time, and then very laboriously describes how everything has just gotten better and better and better, and thus how it's inevitable that things will keep getting better.

He makes some good arguments, but he labors the point endlessly and sounds like an awful curmudgeon. He makes petty attacks on nameless people and seems out to set the world to rights based on his own trivial dislikes. He takes breaks from describing human history to attack proponents of organic farming, his son's teachers, and the like. He seems childish and condescending.

One of his central ideas is that economics - the market - is responsible for absolutely every single positive thing that ever happened. In fact, it's what caused humans to change from animals to people. I'm not saying he's necessarily wrong, but he drives this point home throughout the book, even offering petty insults to the biologists and economists who refute him, yet remain nameless. At a certain point you just wish he would stop creating little parables to describe each stage in human development and how trade suddenly made everything great.

"Exchange is to technology as sex is to evolution," he claims. Indeed. Perhaps he should've left it at that.

He argues that kindness comes from interdependence - ie capitalism. "There is a direct link between commerce and virtue," he says. ... "Where commerce thrives, creativity and compassion both flourish."

This is one of his better arguments, and I must say I agree with him wholly. He also asserts that people like to think of themselves as self-sufficient, but it has been humanity's mixing and mingling and trading that has lead to our rise as a species.

Unfortunately, throughout the book, as I've said, the author sounds like a horrible person and one gets the feeling, reading the book, that one's sitting in the corner of a room at a party being lectured by a terrible bore. It's not that he's wrong but he's just awful to listen to... Moreover, although I agree with him, his arguments do seem very cherry-picked, and his research seems to have the depth of a rather hollow Wikipedia page. Matt Ridley, it seems, is a man who never considered for a moment that he might not be correct about something.