Book Review of "What the Dormouse Said"

I've just finished reading "What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry," by John Markoff a well-known technology writer.

I would highly recommend this book for several reasons. First, it is an interesting and personal history of the development of PCs and the Web. Second, it talks about how revolutionary inventions are not created in a vacuum, but are nested in particular social and political contexts i.e. politics are embedded in design. Third, it shows how personal computers and the Internet were produced in opposition to the authoritarian bureauracies that were controlling mainframe computing and finally, it talks about how technology is inseparable from culture and organization. Here is a quote from the preface:

"What separated the isolated experiments with small computers from the full-blown birth of personal computing was the West Coast realization that computing was a new medium, like books, records, movies, radios, and television. The personal computer had the ability to encompass all of the media that had come before it and had the additional benefit of appearing at a time and place where all the old rules were being questioned. Personal computers that were designed for and belonged to single individuals would emerge initially in concert with a counterculture that rejected authority and believed the human spirit would triumph over corporate technology, not be subject to it."

As people who see the future of unions as entwined with computer technologies we will never be successful at this task without confronting our entrenched traditional values and culture. Check it out.