Product DescriptionMost histories of the personal computer industry focus on technology or business. John Markoff’s landmark book is about the culture and consciousness behind the first PCs—the culture being counter– and the consciousness expanded, sometimes chemically. It’s a brilliant evocation of Stanford, California, in the 1960s and ’70s, where a group of visionaries set out to turn computers into a means for freeing minds and information. In these pages one encounters Ken Kesey and the phone hacker Cap’n Crunch, est and LSD, The Whole Earth Catalog and the Homebrew Computer Lab. What the Dormouse Said is a poignant, funny, and inspiring book by one of the smartest technology writers around.
“Wonderful . . . [It] makes a mind-blowing case that our current silicon marvels were inspired by the psychedelic-tinged, revolution-minded spirit of the sixties. It’s a total turn-on.” —Steven Levy, author of Hackers
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Intersesting perspective!
If nothing else, the footnotes are worth the books price! I guess Computers and LSD are both PsychoStimulants!!!
Rating: - What the Dormouse Said
This book is all surface and no depth, not much more than a collection of anecdotes. The narrative lacks focus and the supervision of critical thought. Look elsewhere to learn anything significant about the technological advances of the period.
Rating: - PREHISTORIC!
If you are a student of the history of the personal computer, this is a fantastic exploration of the PC's "prehistory." Very readable and very informative. Full of the oddball characters one would expect to find in the San Francisco Bay area of the time. I don't think, however, that the author achieves his goal of showing how the sixties counterculture shaped the computer industry, other than pointing out that a lot of computer engineers in California in the 60s and 70s dropped acid and smoked ... Read More
Rating: - Dissapointing
I had high expectations of this book, sadly they were not met. I found for the most part, that the book was slightly more than a collection of somewhat disjoint micro-biographies of people (mainly male) whose signficance is far from clear, save for a few.
One of the most glaring omissions, which should be enought to indicate the casual nature of the work, is the complete lack of discussion of Digital Research, a company that genuinely represented one of the strongest links between free ... Read More
Rating: - Still not the story of how the PC was developed but getting closer
What the Dormouse Said is an attempt to try and tell how the personal computer developed out of the 1960's counterculture. Sadly the author becomes so fixated on one person that he misses his chance to tell the great story. No author has yet to be able to capture the development of the personal computer but this book does have most of the salient elements. From the development of the ARPA net to the IBM 650 we can see the computer industry cloacae. The need for the killer app or the internet is apparent ... Read More
- Intersesting perspective!
- What the Dormouse Said
- Dissapointing
- Still not the story of how the PC was developed but getting closer
