Why read What the Dormouse Said?

Book cover of What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry

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"This makes entertaining reading. Many accounts of the birth of personal computing have been written, but this is the first close look at the drug habits of the earliest pioneers." -New York Times

Most histories of the personal computer industry focus on technology or business. John Markoff's landmark book is…

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Why read it?

1 author picked What the Dormouse Said as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Alex Wright

Author

Longtime technology journalist John Markoff explores the origins of the Silicon Valley mythos in this engaging and insightful history of the early personal computer industry.

The book explores how the modern personal computer took shape amid the counterculture of the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s and 1970s, where an eccentric cast of technology visionaries, hackers, and misfits began pushing the boundaries of human consciousness: embracing utopian ideals, experimenting with mind-expanding drugs, and exploring the still-uncharted possibilities of personal computing.

Markoff does a masterful job of connecting the dots between the Sixties counterculture and the revolutionary ethos that…

From Alex's list on forgotten pioneers of the Internet.