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Accidental Empires To See Reboot In Blog Format

Posted by Unknown on from the book-republishing-2.0 dept.

New submitter shuttah writes "Robert X. Cringely, author of the 1992 influential book Accidental Empires , will be republishing and updating (including pictures and new chapters) the now twenty year-old book via the launch of a new blog also by the author. Cringeley tells us, 'So next month I'll be starting a second blog with its own URL just for Accidental Empires. I, Cringely will continue right here as ever (no changes at all), but on the book blog I will over several months publish — a chapter or so at a time — the entire 100,000-word book for the world to read, free of charge.' The book was also the basis for Cringley's 1996 TV miniseries Triumph of the Nerds released by PBS."

24 comments

  1. 2nd Edition title by srussia · · Score: 1

    Accidental Empire: An Autobiography

    --
    Set your phasers on "funky"!
  2. As Cringely originally envisioned it... by macwhizkid · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's been probably 15 years since I read Accidental Empires, but I remember there being some passage in the book where he talked about how somebody (Stewart Brand, maybe?) was trying to persuade him to publish the book as hypertext, with internal references and links. The idea was the book was not so much a linear story as it was a documentary of a lot of moving parts in an industry that's been moving incredibly fast for 30 years, and hypertext would be the ideal way to present that. Of course, now, this just means another Wiki site, but at the time it seemed like a pretty radical idea.

    I know Cringely catches a lot of flack here and elsewhere for being a bit too hyperbolic, but I've always respected him for being one of the few high-profile tech writers who will genuinely go out on a limb (often correctly) to call the shots of where he thinks a particular tech or company is going. You won't catch Pogue or Mossberg doing that, and most other tech writers just parrot from PR statements. IIRC, he just wrote a blog post recently that he plans to retire later this year, but I hope he keeps writing one way or another.

    1. Re:As Cringely originally envisioned it... by ph1ll · · Score: 2

      Cringely couldn't predict a fart in a bathtub but boy! he wrote an entertaining book.

      --
      --- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
  3. 50 year repeating history by peter303 · · Score: 1

    The chip guys in the 1960s.
    The PC guys in the 1970s.
    The web guys in the 1990s.
    The social computing guys in the 2010s.

    1. Re:50 year repeating history by elrous0 · · Score: 2

      You forgot the hair metal guys in the 80's.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    2. Re:50 year repeating history by peter303 · · Score: 1

      1980s was a condrunum to me. MSFT came of age then, but they originated in the 1970s PC boom. PC clones, workstations, supercomputers, A.I. computing, pen computing were 80s stuff, but not mega-hits like these others. You could argue Dell started in dorm room and became a billionaire, but his stuff more of a new business model than a revolutionary technology.

      Then too I place Google with the 1990s web guys even though they had their huge IPO in the mid-2000s.
      Social computing originated in the 2000s (or earlier). But the big IPOs are now.

    3. Re:50 year repeating history by elrous0 · · Score: 1

      Might call the 80's the era of the first affordable home computers. Commodore, Texas Instruments, Atari, etc. were the first companies to actually make affordable priced home computers for the consumer (costing hundreds of $ vs. thousands).

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    4. Re:50 year repeating history by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's because the guy at the top of this subthread got his chronology dead wrong:

      The 60s were about IT becoming an actual business/economic sector. Chip guys were in the 70s, PCs in the 80s, Web in the 90s, social media in the 2000s

      It's too early to predict what the 2010s will be about, since we just started the decade.

    5. Re:50 year repeating history by elrous0 · · Score: 2

      It's too early to predict what the 2010s will be about

      I'm praying for "Era of women finally finding computer nerds hot."

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  4. The most dangerous man in Silicon Valley... by tekrat · · Score: 2

    The most dangerous man in Silicon Valley sits alone at a cafe...

    Or something like that is how the chapter about Steve Jobs started. At the time the book was written, Steve was still running NeXT and was bitter about being kicked out of Apple.

    I have to wonder how that chapter is going to be updated, now that Steve is universally hailed as a genius. A lot has happened since the book was written. Pixar, iMac, iPhone yadda yadda.

    And with Steve's biography on the shelves and Accidental Empires... well, not, I also have to wonder if this is the author's way of staying relevant, considering that when the book was written the entire concept of mobile computing had yet to be realized.

    --
    If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
    1. Re:The most dangerous man in Silicon Valley... by RicardoGCE · · Score: 1

      I like the "Triumph of the Nerds" version better:

      "The most dangerous man in Silicon Valley sits in an office in this building. People love him and hate him. Often at the same time. For ten years by sheer force of will he made the personal computer industry follow his direction. With this guy we're not talking about someone driven by the profit motive in a desire for an opulent retirement at the age of forty, no we're talking holy war we're talking rivers of blood and fields of dead martyrs to the cause of greater computing. We're talking about a guy who sees the personal computer as his tool for changing the world. We're talking about Steve Jobs."

    2. Re:The most dangerous man in Silicon Valley... by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      I have to wonder how that chapter is going to be updated, now that Steve is universally hailed as a genius.

      He was a genius in the same way that Bill Gates or Warren Buffet are - he was good at making enormous amounts of money. But unlike them he had no interest in doing anything useful with the money he had made.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  5. Most underrated book about SV by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Cringely was and still is an insider. One of the few people that Jobs, Gates, Grove, etc granted requests for an interview. Fascinating read and one of my favorites.

  6. But does it run GNU / Linux? by pinkushun · · Score: 1

    I'm interested to read this, but does it talk about the unsung greats?