PBS show

[Timothy C. May]

At 3:10 AM 6/13/96, Blake Wehlage wrote:
>Hey did any of you guys(and ladies) see the PBS show called, Triumph of the
>Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires in Silicon Valley. I thought it was
>very interesting and informative. (That's coming from a 13 year with the
>teachers say have no future) If you saw it I was wondering your feeling on
>the show.

I caught the show and thought it was pretty good, all in all.

I personally despise the term "nerd," but I won't get into that here.
(Except to say that "nerds," "geeks," and "dweebs" are terms of insult, and
anyone who accepts this labelling by the media and by "jerks" (a comparable
term, by the way) is proably just a dweeb anyone, so I guess the term is
accurate.)

Most of the portrayals of Silicon Valley history was pretty accurate,
especially the 1975-78 "Homebrew Computer Club" days. (I used to go to
about every other one of these, mainly in '77-78, where I sometimes passed
out free samples of the 8080 and stuff like that. A friend of mine at the
time was one of the Apple II motherboard designers, and another was the
first employee hired by Jobs and Woz. Personally, my first personal
computer was a Processor Technology SOL, as I thought the Apple II looked
too much like a toy. Shows you what I knew.)

The first "Byte Shop" opened in late '75 or early '76, a few miles from my
apartment, so I used to go there to see the new machines. This is the store
that bought the first batch of Apple Is (not IIs). Mainly I remember the
Altair, the IMSAI 8080, the Cromemco Dazzler, and so on.

Those were exciting times. But, having worked at Intel during those heady
days, and being pretty active these days on the Net, I'd have to say the
Web, Net, Java, etc. are *just as exciting* (if not more so) than those
days. So, the best years are probably yet to come.

(BTW, I also had an ARPANET account in 1973, when there were only several
sites as nodes.)

Back to the show...

Cringely (actually, Stephens) is pretty good at doing sidebars explaining
computers.

So, a pretty fair history of the industry. Probably the best such show I've
seen.

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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