Old computer books

From: John Foust <jfoust_at_threedee.com>
Date: Thu Jun 25 11:38:24 1998

At 07:25 AM 6/25/98 PDT, Max Eskin wrote:
>Why not? The Soul of a New Machine, Insanely Great, and Hackers seemed
>to do just fine, to name a few. I don't mean an encyclopedia, but a
>bunch of stories about the design of stuff (i.e. a chapter on how
>Multics was made, a chapter on how the Apple arose, a chapter on where
>the ENIAC came from,etc.).

Once upon a time when I was in the thick of it, I thought about writing
a book about the history of the Amiga, where even from the early days
it clear the machine had strengths beyond the more popular computers
of the time, and that it was swimming against the current.

The problem in my mind was that there was no guiding thread, no "hook",
no core story, no moral or lesson - just fumbling computer companies,
insane investors, inept marketroids, crazy genius types, etc. Is this
interesting enough, or just interesting to Amiga-heads? I knew other
people who thought about writing a book like this who had similar
concern about lack of focus, about how to make the story interesting
enough for someone who wasn't personally involved in some aspect of it.

One clarifying thought was inspired by the drunken ramblings of an
Amiga dealer during the last days at a NewTek party, who said "It's
like we were from five years in the future, and we had television,
and we were trying to explain it to people who'd only seen a radio.
Radio with pictures? Who wants that?"

There's another lesson to be told about the tendency of techies to
believe that technical excellence should always Win, but it rarely
does. Then again, maybe these sorts of Valley stories rarely have
a point. :-)

- John
Received on Thu Jun 25 1998 - 11:38:24 BST