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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
I always thought it was funny that LSD and BSD both came out of Berkely :)
The punch card system which was automated by Jacquard for looming about ~1800?
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.
Feed your head, feed your heaaaddddd....
har.
After the way he twisted the "facts" of the Kevin Mitnick story I just don't trust him at all. It seems that every time he has done a story on any topic that I have personal knowledge of, he gets it wrong. So I will take a pass on this book.
"I was privileged to receive a pre-publication copy."
means
"I was recruited to advertise for it on slashdot."
S(FAFABI*)CNR
*for any false accusations, but I
I can't believe someone would moderate this "troll". It's from a song by Jefferson Airplane called "White Rabbit". The title of the book is derived from a line in the song!
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
Markoff is a co-author of "Takedown", about how Shimomura captured Mitnick, "the world's most dangerous hacker". He also libeled one of my friends in "Cyberpunk". I wouldn't give this guy a dime in royalties. If he's trying to pretend that he was part of the in-crowd back in the day, then it's a little late now.
Tristan Yates
Sorry I can't point to the chapter, but I remember reading about this in "The Dream Machine", which is also a very very good story of computers and how they were influenced by J.C.R. Licklidder.
Basically Licklidder had the notion of computers being more interactive than they were (the punch card era), and was in charge of ARPA at the right time and gave a whole lot of money to colleges/research groups/practically anybody who had the same notion. I'm sure he's mentioned in this book (Dormouse) because I believe he funded Englebart.
I definitely plan on reading this book, but I would say that "The Dream Machine" belongs on the shelf because as well.
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.
Sounds like you might be talking about Community Memory. Now, for some shameless whoring:
Steven Levy's Hackers has a chapter about the Community Memory project.
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
Does this mean they are all in the same subdirectory?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
back when it was "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" by Steven Levy.
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/729
The latest Slashdot meme.
Or was it, LSD went into Berkeley, and BSD came out?
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
This book, by Steven Levy, tells a similar tale, but starts on the East coast at MIT, and amkes an excellent comparsion and contrast between the East and West coast cultures and theer different influences on computing. Certainly the reviewer's summary of Markoff's book makes it sound like Markoff's book correlates highly with Levy's history of what was going on on the West coast.
_Hacker's_ (used by Levy in the best sense of the word) is a great way to learn some (relatively ) early history of computing and the people who created it.
You've obviously never lived in Berkeley.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
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?
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
The "drug" culture and the "computer" culture were one and the same many times. Thats because there was no real "culture" per se, it was the brightest minds doing what fascinated them the most. All the great psychedlics coming out of the berkeley labs were not being discovered, synthesized and distributed by "druggies". It was the academics, studying all kinds of new and wondrous things. They did not fear the unknown. There was the air of a bold new future hovering on the horizon, that was totally squashed by the social "squares", Nixon, etc. Computers, drugs, literature, social chaos, all of that was burbling in the personal/academic lives of these folks. The most intelligent people on earth did not fear new and unexplored vistas. Games on computers!? Strange audio on computers? Movie cameras making bizarre psychedelic scenes? Chemicals that set your brain operating on strange experiences? Whaaaaa??? Most of society didn't get it, and never have and never will.
It was the people who were into maths, technology, and study that were into computer development.
Big Brother and the Drug Warriors would like to thank you for spreading our propoganda. Now here's a coupon for a free Big Mac-- go see what's on TV.
I think you've swollowed too much of bullshit that the Drug War has pushed at you.
Many people who are into math, technology and study are also into drugs. Many are not.
Some people actually understand advanced topics in physics, math & engineering better when they are high. The secret is that they weren't high all the time-- because sometimes, as you said, you can't innovate without concentration.
It's not like this just happened in the 60s either. People have always done drugs, and some people have used those experiences to help create incredible things. Right now there are geniuses taking LSD, and some of those people are going to go on and do great things.
Unfortunately, many people who did drugs in the past would be persecuted if this knowledge became public. I bet your parents smoked pot once in a while-- it's too bad they can't be honest about it.
For example, many of the key developers of Chaos Theory did drugs, and they were pretty open about it.
Al Gore, George Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger have all been drug users, and they somehow became 3 of the most powerful people in the world.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Mainly because the folks who were working on them in the sixties and seventies wanted to change the world. You cannot separate that desire from the political and spiritual (and I do not use that word lightly) melieu that was the counterculture of that era. The reason why almost nothing radically new (on the order of the idea of a personal computer, the ethernet, the laser printer, etc.) has been invented in computing in the past fourty years is because most of the people who work with this stuff today don't really care about transforming the world. Most are bound into an environment that encourages exploitative behavior and uses of technology that enable more efficient exploitation. In addition, the corporate environments in which we work force us into narrow mental compartments that allow us no freedom for exploration of broader concerns. If the energy wasted in this corporate-driven insanity could be harnessed toward explorative rather than exploitive behavior, we'd have a better world and an outflowing of ideas and creativity that would make the past fourty years look like the desert it was. It's one of the reasons that the free software movement is working - it encourages exploratory and cooperative rather than exploitive behavior.
That is all.
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