The Hidden History of Code-Breaking
Codebreaking conjures images of Bletchley Park, where Britain’s war-time team of cryptologists broke Germany’s Enigma code. As British essayist Sinclair McKay shows in The Hidden History, people have been making and breaking codes since ancient Greece (if not earlier) and no system of encryption has proven impregnable. McKay ranges widely, touching on the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics (the methods used were comparable to codebreaking), the biblical “writing on the wall,” the decoding of the human genome and the efforts to send binary-coded messages to the stars (no one has responded).
The Hidden History is an enjoyable romp across 6,000 years as different societies have grappled with secrecy and transparency. “A new generation of infinitely faster technology is approaching at speed,” McKay concludes. Quantum computing and AI? He has faith that humans will remain at the helm because “there will always be a need for minds that can think upside down and sideways,” he writes with cheery optimism.
