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What The Dormouse Said
John Markoff, veteran technology reporter for the Times, is the first to comprehensively tell this story of the pre-history of the PC. Markoff, best known for Cyberpunk and Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick, explodes the conventional notion that the PC replaced the mini-computer in the same way that the mini-computer replaced the mainframe -- by a sort of evolutionary selection within the computer business, by persistently investigating the roots of the PC -- its unsung pioneers, its user interface, and the culture of open-source software in the San Francisco drug and anti-war culture of the late 1950s and 1960s.
Most histories of the personal computer begin with Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Apple in 1976, but while hanging out at SAIL in the mid 1970s, and at the First West Coast Computer Faire in 1977, I heard highly attenuated versions of the folklore that Markoff has only now, after nearly 30 years, run to ground. Conventional histories of the PC make passing reference to the MITS Altair (1974) before going on the talk about the Apple, the IBM PC (1981) and what followed. The more sophisticated would conspiratorially tell the story of how Steve Jobs "stole the idea" for the Macintosh from Xerox's fabled Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) as they were "fumbling the future," and nearly everyone knew that Bill Gates then stole the ideas from Apple.
But the truth of those half-heard folktales from my youth is that nearly every concept in the personal computer predates all of this, in a delightfully picaresque tale that starts in the late 1950s and weaves together computers, LSD, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the Vietnam War and dozens of characters.
Markoff has painstakingly researched the men (and a few women) who populated the cutting edge of the computer revolution in 1960s San Francisco, capturing an oral history of the PC never before recorded. Central to Dormouse is the story of Doug Engelbart, the "tragic hero" of computing, and the man who invented -- and demonstrated -- virtually every aspect of modern computing as much as a decade before the PC. Engelbart presided over the ground-breaking 1968 demo of his Augment concept, which included multiple overlapping windows, the original mouse, a screen cursor, video conferencing, hyperlinks and cut-and-paste -- virtually every aspect of the modern PC user interface three decades later. Yet the combination of Engelbart's ego and his poor management skills doomed the project, and his best team members leaked over to Xerox PARC, where they worked on the equally doomed "Alto" workstation, source of Steve Job's inspiration.
In parallel to this central story are those of the Stanford AI Lab (SAIL), the Free University, the People's Computer Company, and the Homebrew Computer Club, all located within a few files of the center of the San Francisco peninsula. SAIL, in its first incarnation under John McCarthy and Les Earnest, may have been the first place where computers (or the powerful access to a time-sharing server) really were "personal," and was almost certainly the birthplace of the first true computer game, SpaceWar. It was the locus of naked hot-tub parties, a porn video, and not a little bit of LSD (taken both as serious experimentation and recreationally) that fueled a cast of characters dodging the Vietnam war at Stanford and at the ARPA-funded Stanford Research Institute and creating a counter-culture. Virtually everyone linked to the genesis of the PC spent some time at SAIL, including Alan Kay, who conceived the first notebook computer, who appears first at SAIL before running into Englebart and his enrapturing demo of Augment, leading him to PARC and eventually Apple.
Dormouse is peppered with odd juxtapositions and combinations of characters including Fred Moore, the anti-war activist and single father who knit the community together with a pile of special punch cards and a knitting needle and helped create the People's Computer Company and the Homebrew Computer Club. Another, Steve Dompier, was widely accused -- falsely, Markoff convincingly reports -- of being the source for the infamous distribution of Gates' early Altair BASIC. (Was this the eThrough the whole story Stewart Brand -- of Whole Earth Catalog fame -- pops up "Zelig-like" at nearly every turn. The list goes on: Larry Tesler, Ken Kesey, Joan Baez, Ted Nelson, Lee Felsenstein, Bill English, Janis Joplin, and Bill Gates.
If the book has a problem, this is it. Markoff neither presents a first-person oral history nor is he able to tease a single central narrative thread out of this creative soup. He tells several interwoven stories, but there is so large a cast of characters that one must be a dedicated reader (or have a previous knowledge of some of the events described) to keep everything straight. Without a single narrative, the book returns several times to the start of a timeline, retracing it from another perspective, and after a while you feel the need for a map.
Markoff's own "Takedown" shows that with a clear narrative arc he is a wonderful writer, and while the complexity of the tale may keep away casual readers, Markoff does the entire technology industry a great service by capturing these tales while most of the primary sources are still alive. The central story of Doug Engelbart deserves a book of its own -- a better book than the nearly unreadable Bootstrapping by Thierry Bardini -- and one can hope that Markoff revisits the trove of original material he located for this story to write that book.
Dormouse is an essential "prequel" to Michael Hiltzik's excellent Dealers of Lightning, the definitive work (so far) on Xerox PARC, and belongs on every bookshelf that includes Katie Hafner's Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet.
For anyone who thinks they know anything, or wants to know anything, about the real roots of the PC revolution and the pioneers who never got famous, this book is required reading.
You can purchase What The Dormouse Said from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
late 60's/early 70's? I used to hang with some of the former "flower children" back in the 80's and I vaguely recall a discussion about free access terminals scattered about the Bay Area. I've never heard about it again. Anybody know anything about this and care to shed some light?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
From what I've seen of John Gilmore, I'd have to assume that the sixties counterculture more affected Sun Microsystems computers, and this then tricled down to PCs. Certainly a lot of computer innovation came out of Berkely, which was indisputably a hotbed of the counterculture.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Not exactly true. Ever read 'the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test'? There's a character in there that has fascinated me for years - he's a computer programmer that spends half the year working, the other half hanging out and getting stoned. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if those with the personal freedom to push towards what they enjoy and are interested in are those who produce the most.
I've known quite a few very bright computer people, and an incredibly bright programmer or two, who were interested in having a good time and computers were a part of that occasionally. I'm pretty sure that if they worked their asses off for one day in two, they'd outdo me working halfass for four days.
My little site.
For anyone interested in what is probably the most factual telling of the conflict between Markoff and Mitnick, check out Freedom Downtime.
I saw the premier in New York, and have no doubt that Markoff is just out to make another buck. Markoff attempted to get a movie called 'Takedown' produced and released while Kevin Mitnick was being held without a trial. In the movie, Mitnick is found guilty, and they wanted to release it before his case ever went to trial, which would have severely reduced his chances of getting a fair trial.
Aero
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
Am I the only one who thought that after reading the front page summary? I won't read the rest. What the hell does computer science have to do with the drug scene?
Prior to mid-1970's, a typical "computer engineer" was wearing a necktie and lab overalls. From about 1980's, a typical computer engineer is wearing a t-shirt advocating his favorite rock group, fantasy world or political agenda. Do you really think it had nothing to do with social changes in 1970's California - related, but not limited, to the drug culture?
Protests were only a part of (perhaps the most visible part of) the 60s counterculture. But it was by no means the only characteristic of the movement. In fact, protests were only one expression of the fundamental underlying meme of the whole counterculture movement. The counterculture phenomina, in general, is primarly about questioning the status quo, and the social, political and economic structures that are viewed as sacrosanct. The fact that the hippies were protesting, as you put it, is just one expression of what was going on in the country, for many citizens, at the time.
So, consider that many of the innovative and decentralized uses of computers that we identify today sprung from technologists living the Bay Area in the 60s - a place and time iconic of the counterculture movement.
Is it such as stretch to consider that underlying current of questioning the status quo would also effect how individuals viewed (computer) technology, and how it was created, adminstered and used? Is it hard to believe that here were serious people who studied math, science and engineering who were also steeped in the counterculture?
I think it'd be foolish to dismiss the influence that the social attitudes have on the development of technology. In fact, it's obvious to anyone that has studied the human history of science and technology even superficially can tell you that socio-economic developments drives invention and discovery, and invention and discovery drives socio-economic development. Read "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond for a comprehensive overview of how the cycle works.
I wouldn't dismiss the influence that the (liberal) hippies had so casually, just like I wouldn't dismiss the influence that the "Iron Triangle" had on the development of American technology prowess in the later half of the 20th century.
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
Taken from Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland":
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...and the Dormouse sulkily remarked "If you ca'n't be civil, you'd better finish the story for yourself."
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:-)
"You might as well say", added the Dormouse, which seemed to be talking in its sleep, "that 'I breathe when I sleep' is the same thing as 'I sleep when I breathe'!"
The Dormouse shook its head impatiently, and said, without opening its eyes. "Of course: just what I was going to remark myself."
Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing in its sleep "Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle----" and went on so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop.
The Dormouse slowly opened its eyes. "I wasn't asleep," it said in a hoarse, feeble voice, "I heard every word you fellows were saying."
"Once upon a time there were three little sisters," the Dormouse began in great hurry; "and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well----"
"They lived on treacle," said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.
"So they were," said the Dormouse; "very ill."
The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said "It was a treacle-well."
"One, indeed!" said the Dormouse indignantly. However, he consented to go on. "And so these three little sisters--they were learning to draw, you know----"
"Treacle," said the Dormouse, without considering at, this time.
"Of course they were," said the Dormouse: "well in."
"They were learning to draw," the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eye, for it was getting very sleepy; "and they drew all manner of things--everything that begins with an M----"
The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: "----that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness--you know you say things are 'much of a muchness'--did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness!"
"Sixteenth," said the Dormouse.
"I wish you wouldn't squeeze so, "said the Dormouse, who was sitting next to her. "I can hardly breathe."
"You've no right to grow here," said the Dormouse.
"Yes, but I grow at a reasonable pace," said the Dormouse: "not in that ridiculous fashion."
"Treacle," said a sleepy voice behind her.
Interestingly the line doesn't play on any of these. Instead the Hatter, standing before the Court as witness, claims the Dormouse said something, but he couldn't remember it
And another note, theres a line:
"Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court."
Anyone thinks, Adams consciously referenced this?
I was at Berkeley in 1969 studying computer science. Where were you? You are either completely uninformed or a flat out liar.
Did you know that there was an in house Fortran complier, written at Berkeley for the CDC 6400, call "ACID"? Maybe if I go out and dig throught the papers in my garage I could find the manual. Do you think that was done by a bunch of slacking idiots? That was a hard machine to progam in assembler, and most of the OS software was assembly language.
Not everyone at Berkley was a long haired dope smoking freak, but a lot of us were. And a lot of us were really smart people who did a lot of very ground breaking work.
I bet you never cut a line of assembler in you life. Not that assembly language is the test of good coding, but you attitude make it clear that you are a usless looser who has never done anything difficult in your life.
You think computer science didn't start until the invention of the mouse? Go back under a rock, you slug. Turing didn't have a mouse, he didn't even have a fully general purpose computer and he established basic principles of computer science that change how we view the world. McCarthy invented LISP and Kernighan and Richie (and a bunch of other smart people) invented C and UNIX on teletypes.
I'm sorry I called you a slug. Slugs are useful parts of the natural world, and I insult them by putting you in the same catagory. You are simply mentally deficent. Along with the jerks who modded you up.
Prior to mid-1970's, a typical "computer engineer" was wearing a necktie and lab overalls.
Uh, hardly. You should do some reading of history before making proclamations like these. The typical hardware engineer was a professor working in the California or New York college systems, both of which were largely dominated by left-wing liberals in the 1960s. Prior to the mid 1970s, computing was an esoteric enough practice that only a few hundred people could do it; therefore primadonnas were tolerated, and the suit and necktie essentially did not exist.
Look up the histories of SAIL, the Model Railroad Club or the Dreyfuss brothers' reactions to IBM's internal culture, if you'd like to see how things actually went.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Dude, California is bigger, richer and more influential than probably 80% of the countries in the world. What rubric are you using? I think you either need to do less drugs, or more drugs. Whichever works. :-)
Stop making it sound like all drug users think drugs are a magical gateway to superior life and intelligence. Most of us know better, and you're embarrassing us.
I don't think anybody has said that you gain 50 IQ points for each joint you smoke. Clearly, that's not the case. What pot (and other hallucinogens) give you is not mechanical ability -- they give you perspective; namely, a different one. Sometimes that's the most precious thing in the world. That's what anti-drug folks will never understand. Drugs can give you a chance to step outside your own shoes for awhile and think with different mental patterns. They aren't better, they aren't even worse -- they're just different. It's kind of like having two brains, and as they say, two heads are better than one. Many smart people use drugs to attack problems from different angles. The actual implementation of a solution may be left until they're sober, but the rumination while on cannabis can be quite beneficial.
Of course, if you just watch TV the whole time you're stoned it won't do a damn bit of good. It's all in how you use it. I prefer playing guitar and ruminating. If that's not why you smoke -- and it would seem to be for legitimate medical reasons -- that's fine. But don't assume you know what it's like for everybody. It's time to get a little perspective.
Electric Monkey Pants
The cover was planet Earth, shown from orbit. It contained technology -- beautiful stuff, from hand-held power plows to the first PC's to cheap land cruisers. I submit that the WEC was more symbolic of the counterculture than the Time magazine articles that formed the basis of much of the public perception of the movement.
A lot of software developers started then, when - again - the rules were being challenged, and the people vacuum in the industry became attractive; few colleges knew what a CS degree should even look like, but the counterculture also espoused "Look, you can do it, give it a try" and encouraged people to step out of the ego-crushing conformity pressed on the public via wide dissemination of corporate advertising memes, e.g. the barely-subliminal messages coming out of GM advertisements (Longer! Lower! Wider!).
As a result, people were encouraged to think out of the box for the first time in a long time, a necessary breakout from the corporate-government-proprietary wartime morality that lasted well into the 50's.
The world around us was pretty grey -- McCarthy was in power. Down at the bottom there were people saying I can have power too, I can be empowered, I'll be a computer programmer and it doesn't require me to compete at the beach to be important. That's what drove the counterculture into adopting the PC as a causus belli. Sorry about the stereotype, but the geek cliche came from that.
Nullus stercus, ipi eram.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
As an EE grad student at Stanford in 1972, Les "unofficially" gave me a key to the building and said I could play late at night (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering weren't on the best of terms; Stanford CS had just stolen McCarthy from MIT and Knuth from Caltech - not to mention Robert Floyd and thought it was pretty hot shit!). Les was in a particularly small group: African-Americans in computing circa 1970. I'll never forget the time I telnet'ed into MIT from SAIL - a journey of 3,000 miles with a few keystrokes. Back then, nearly every ARPANet host had a "guest" telnet account. Sad, isn't it, how warped people have destroyed the trusting, innocent network that was just being invented.
Another idiot modded "Insightful"...
The '60's "love children" caused an economic bust in the '70's? What kind of bullshit is that? Since when were '60's "flower children" in charge of the US economy?
As I recall, it was people like Johnson and Nixon who undermined the gold standard and crashed the "Go-Go" years - which were mostly about people like Bernie Cornfield and Robert Vesco anyway...Not to mention prolonging an expensive failed war...
Not to mention that the Sixties had just as many and varied personalities in it as the current day - you had "peace freaks", you had "revolutionaries" like Abbie Hoffman, you had "drug techies", you had everything.
I sat most of it out in high school, the Army, and unemployment in Connecticut, so I missed most of it. But I've read some of the stuff that came out of it in the political and philosophical realm, so to dismiss it all as "flower children" is just idiotic.
It had its influence as all things do, but today it IS mostly irrelevant - so I suspect Markoff's book is irrelevant, too.
The future belongs to Transhumanism, which is a lot older - and newer - than the Sixties. If you want to look for influences on the past and future, check out "Great Mamo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition" by Ed Regis. Great read.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!