From the (e)Bookshelf: Fire in the Valley
Mar. 20th, 2020 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerAmong the many sources cited in the first volume of They Create Worlds, the title Fire in the Valley managed to catch my attention just a little more than many others, perhaps because it was referenced in the “dawn of personal computing” section. The first edition of that book by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine had been talked up just a bit in mid-1980s computer magazines; that the later text referred to an ebook edition had me contemplating the possibility of reading it at last. When I started searching for it, though, I turned up not just the second edition cited but a third edition, not that many years old, with the slightly provocative subtitle “The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer.” I went ahead and bought a copy of the ebook.
To some extent I don’t know how many surprises I was expecting to see; that the book did mention David Ahl and Creative Computing was a plus for me just as it had been for They Create Worlds. However, the history of the company IMSAI did get my attention. I had understood the IMSAI computer to be a more refined clone of the original Altair 8800 hobby computer kit (with the Altair’s manufacturer MITS getting quite a bit of coverage), but the book described the company as intent on selling its systems to small businesses while everyone else was still a matter of independent hobbyists and driven by a 1970s self-help system called est, even if that seemed to drive it to destruction in the end.
As for the companies that have lasted, it is a little tempting to think of all the complaints over the years about “if not the winners, then the survivors have written the history books.” There’s a good bit of coverage of Apple, although I have the understanding that had been there from the first edition. The “home computer” boom and bust of the early 1980s doesn’t get much attention, though. Apple’s story stretches to Steve Jobs coming back to the company and managing to keep it going to the point of getting into smartphones, although the “third edition” material might feel familiar and recent enough to not quite stand out.
It was the very conclusion of the book where “the death of the personal computer” might really come up, and while I’d been contemplating certain criticisms that users have relinquished control over their machines for promises of security (even as I read the ebook on my own phone) this book didn’t go that far. It did mention open source software, which I’ll admit to suspecting can make its own demands on people even if they may not have changed that much from the days of university computing labs and 8-bit hackers. In finishing the book, anyway, I was ready to look for other topics.
To some extent I don’t know how many surprises I was expecting to see; that the book did mention David Ahl and Creative Computing was a plus for me just as it had been for They Create Worlds. However, the history of the company IMSAI did get my attention. I had understood the IMSAI computer to be a more refined clone of the original Altair 8800 hobby computer kit (with the Altair’s manufacturer MITS getting quite a bit of coverage), but the book described the company as intent on selling its systems to small businesses while everyone else was still a matter of independent hobbyists and driven by a 1970s self-help system called est, even if that seemed to drive it to destruction in the end.
As for the companies that have lasted, it is a little tempting to think of all the complaints over the years about “if not the winners, then the survivors have written the history books.” There’s a good bit of coverage of Apple, although I have the understanding that had been there from the first edition. The “home computer” boom and bust of the early 1980s doesn’t get much attention, though. Apple’s story stretches to Steve Jobs coming back to the company and managing to keep it going to the point of getting into smartphones, although the “third edition” material might feel familiar and recent enough to not quite stand out.
It was the very conclusion of the book where “the death of the personal computer” might really come up, and while I’d been contemplating certain criticisms that users have relinquished control over their machines for promises of security (even as I read the ebook on my own phone) this book didn’t go that far. It did mention open source software, which I’ll admit to suspecting can make its own demands on people even if they may not have changed that much from the days of university computing labs and 8-bit hackers. In finishing the book, anyway, I was ready to look for other topics.