When I arrived from Mexico and war-torn Central America to cover Silicon Valley I was impressed, and more than slightly skeptical, to find millionaires with some kind of social bent. Money, of course, matters more than revolution around here, but it is not always the whole picture. This is not easy to understand for a foreigner (and much less to explain as a correspondent is supposed to do).
That maybe why I enjoyed so much reading John Markoff’s What the Dormouse said, How the 60’s counterculture shaped the Personal Computer Industry (Viking).
San Francisco, California, 10.jul.05
An easy read, the book
traces small and meaningful moments in the life of some of the key actors of
the PC revolution. This includes the first Stewart Brand’s LSD trip as well as
Doug Englebart Brooks Hall Auditorium conference on December 9th
1968. “In many wasy it is still the most remarkable computer-technology
demonstration of all time” writes Markoff.
What the Dormouse said
weaves the networks of interactions between peace activists who wanted to
change the world through protest, hippies who sought to augment the human mind
through LSD, and engineers.
It sheds a fascinating
light on at least two of the key confrontations that matter so much today:
· People who
want computers to substitute humans vs. those who want them to augment the
human mind as in Artificial Intelligence vs. Engelbart’s “Augmentation
Framework.”
· “The
hacker’s ethos of sharing information” vs. “the defenders of information as
private property” as in Bill Gates vs. the Homebrew Computer Club.
I liked Markoff’s book
because it gives historic legitimacy to those who advocate a more democratic,
and open use of IT.
Wikipedia on Homebrew
Computer Club http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_computer_club
(see also Stewart
Brand’s 1995 article We owe it all to the hippies http://members.aye.net/~hippie/hippie/special_.htm)
Markoff’s Book on
Amazon http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0670033820/qid=1121032080/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_ur_1/104-7457024-2099925?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Review in the
San Francisco
Chronicle http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/04/24/RVGSIC93AT1.DTL
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Posted by: mismo | 2006.04.12 at 04:38