Triumph of the Nerds

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Been working my way through the Steve Jobs biography the past week and I’ve been a bit surprised at what some have found to be “new” revelations from the book. Chief TWiT, Leo Laporte, was surprised at how much crying seems to have taken place around and including Steve Jobs. And while crying hasn’t been too common in my work experience, I have read about this phenomenon at Apple in other books before. So, it concerns me that tech pundits like Laporte, who actually met Jobs and Woz, might not have as strong a grasp on our tech heritage and history as we might assume.

I cringe when I hear that the movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley” is listed by some tech-personalities as their favorite geek movie about tech history (I’m talking about you, Cali Lewis). “Pirates” is as close to a historical depiction of the events depicted like “A Hard Day’s Night” was an accurate depiction of the Beatles’ experiences touring in the early years. Not so much. So, having spent far too much time reading and researching the subject it falls upon me to share these not so hidden sources of tech history.

Let’s start with “Pirates,” the movie was loosely based on the book, Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine. I found the original 1984 version when I was writing and researching for an article on IBM’s OS/2 initiative in 1987. I was happy when they issued a 2000-collectors edition, because it meant that I could buy my own copy, but the 1984 version was a better, “less hip” version.

For those of you who prefer to get your history in video form, one of the best is the three-part “Triumph of the Nerds” by Robert X. Cringley. The PBS produced mini-series was based on Cringely’s book Accidental Empires, which followed the PC evolution from it’s semi-conductor pre-history to IBM’s OS/2 debacle, the rise of the PC clones and fading of Apple in the early 1990s.

A follow-up mini-series “Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet,” also hosted by Cringley, was based on the Stephen Segaller book of the same name. This three-part series followed the 1960s DARPA beginning of what would become the Internet to the commercial emergence in the late 1990s. Oddly the video version has never been made available in DVD (or Bluray) and can only be purchased in VHS. Weird.

Most recently, the much promoted Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, making it’s way across the country as a theater-only release, was culled from the Triumph of the Nerds interviews of Steve Jobs, unedited and 70-minutes long.

I read the following three books just after Jobs returned to Apple while I was building a Mac-centric network for my magnet school grant elementary school in Southern California. They filled in information on the lost years at Apple after Steve Job’s departure and before his return, how close Apple came to oblivion with bone-head decisions from the top and more revelations about all of the tears shed at Apple:

1. Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders by Jim Carlton
2. Apple Confidential by Owen Linzmayer (out of print)
3. Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World’s Most Colorful Company by  Owen Linzmayer

In 2005 Macintosh co-creator, Andy Hertzfeld, gave us an insider view with the book, Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made. The book had it’s origins in the folklore.org website that Hertzfeld setup in order to gather anecdotes going back to the beginning of the creation of the mac. Hertzfeld and friends supply illustrations and notes from the planning stages of the macintosh and, of course, a few more tales that involved crying.

Back on the video side of the story, two mac-centric documentaries were released around the time of the 2008 macworld expo that looked at the macintosh-phenomena from different angles. The first one, Macheads focused mostly on the mac community, a few fringe mac-personalities (call “mac-macs” by Your Mac Life‘s Shawn King), questioned the need for user-groups in the age of the Internet and the future of the mac community.
The second documentary, Welcome to Macintosh went back to the Apple I and Apple ][ with interviews of the third Apple Co-Founder, Ron Wayne, previously mentioned mac co-creator and folklorist, Andy Hertzfeld, mac-evangelist, Guy Kawasaki and a host of others. Steve Jobs did not grace either documentary with any on-camera comments or participation, something that comes up several times with Hertzfeld teasing the filmmakers saying, yeah, Steve was just here the other day.

This is list is neither definitive nor exhaustive (The Soul of A New Machine comes to mind), but before one wants to weigh in on the Issacson tome it might be good to be a bit more versed in our geek heritage and history. Don’t limit your geek-history knowledge to a made-for-TV movie that compressed the participants down to caricatures and decides that the whole story needed to rest on the competition between Jobs and Gates. Please. No.

Resources:

I was there in 1974 when the “Jesus Movement” hit Southern California. I heard about Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel, the first of Frisbee’s two mentors. But by the time I was old enough to venture to Costa Mesa the scene had changed and I was busy learning from the Jesuits and Catholic Charismatics at Loyola Marymount University in West Los Angeles.

Vineyard Long Beach worship team, by Joe Bustillos, circa January 2006

It would be another 30-year, while I was playing with a worship band in Long Beach, when I began to hear the stories about a non-conventional personality who had been there in the beginning. A friend talked about this crazy guy who led huge revival meetings in Long Beach, but then faded from history. I didn’t think much about the stories until I happened across the documentary, Frisbee: The Life And Death Of A Hippie Preacher, on PBS one late night many years later.

My friend was right: Frisbee was one unconventional dude… but then it was the late 60s/70s, a most unconventional time. I’m reminded of the child’s book, The Clown of God by Tomie dePaola, when I think about Frisbee’s story. I can tell you that nothing is as clean or perfect as the church folks would want you to believe. However one might feel about miracles and whether God did miracles through Frisbee, I have no doubts that Chuck Smith or John Wimber (the second pastor to “employ” Frisbee) or Frisbee himself believe that God was using Frisbee to so “something great” through him. That Smith and Wimber made a calculated choice to use Frisbee’s anointing to promote their ministries was also pretty obvious. Alas, unlike The Clown of God, this one is a tragic story, one by which it would seem that God anointed a young man to do something miraculous, but a young man with the one flaw that traditional Christianity and his mentors could not accept. Lonnie Frisbee was gay.

Chuck Smith one time said from the pulpit that maybe God left the fossil record to fool scientists and the like. I rejected that notion because it would make God out to be a deliberate deceiver. That the pride of men can allow for us to be deceived or more often to deceive ourselves is one thing, but for God to deliberately do such a thing kind of goes against the notion that God is the embodiment of Truth. But then given the contradictory elements of this sad take, maybe God is a trickster, like Anansi in the West African tales. I mean, He picked a young man to do great things, but then to confound those who would naturally recognize Frisbee’s anointing He complicated the story by selecting a young man who was physically attracted to other young men. Here was someone who spread the New Testament grace of God’s forgiveness and then, in a very Old Testament manner, was struck down much too young by AIDs. So sad. Even at his funeral, the Trickster might have transpired to show that the mentors didn’t get it, when Chuck Smith spoke and equated Frisbee with the Old Testament story of Samson, lamenting that Frisbee could have done so much more if he had just not given in to his homosexuality. Smith and Wimber and others wanted to be a part of what God seemed to have done through Frisbee but they tired and then dismissed the man when they couldn’t control him.

And then to add insult to injury, Frisbee’s role in the early Calvary Chapel and Vineyard Church movements was either minimized or almost completely missing (In The Radical Middle Frisbee is mentioned by name by the author, but when he quotes Wimber Frisbee is referred to as “the young preacher”). Let’s just say that I attended various Calvary Chapels and Vineyard Churches for over twenty-year but had never heard Frisbee’s story until the mid-2000s from my worship leader/buddy. Not good. So, for all of my prior whining, I’m glad that I wasn’t mentored in that fashion and that I had to make my way in the world, learning what I could without someone’s restrictive and destructive theology limiting my explorations. Lonnie Frisbee, Hippie Preacher, RIP.

Sources:

• Lonnie Frisbee Project, http://www.lonniefrisbee.com/ retrieved on 11/1/4/2011
• Lonnie Frisbee, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Frisbee retrieved 11/14/2011
• video: Frisbee – The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher Trailer – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv3O8SseOio retrieved 11/14/2011
• John Wimber, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wimber retrieved 11/14/2011.
• Chuck Smith, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Smith_(pastor) retrieved 11/14/2011.
• image: Vineyard Long Beach worship team, by Joe Bustillos, circa January 2006
• amazon link: The Clown of God by Tomie dePaola
• amazon link: The Quest for the Radical Middle: A History of the Vineyard by Bill Jackson.

Is The IBM PC/XT Doomed To Be Technology’s Next Dinosaur?

by Joe Bustillos – November 17, 1987 – CSUF COMM201 – Feature Article #2

Old TV's and compute monitors - microsoft office clipart

On April 2, 1987 IBM (International Business Machines) introduced a new line of microcomputers and an operating system for their micros that will be incompatible with the original IBM Personal Computer and its operating system (MSDOS). An operating system is an essential program that makes up the “brains” and “personality” of a computer. It enables the computer to “talk” to its disk drives and its screen and it’s what the computer user “talks to” when he types on the keyboard (and you thought nobody was listening). If two computers from two manufacturers, for example AT&T and Compaq, are running the same operating system (MSDOS) chances are pretty good that a word-processing program that works on one computer will work on the other computer.

But IBM’s new operating system, OS/2 (Operating System, version 2) will not run on what makes up the bulk of all IBM microcomputers in use today, the PC/XT-class micros. (OS/2 will work on the newer AT and 386-based machines and of course the brand new PS/2 computers that IBM has just introduced).

Much heated speculation has been generated in the computer press both before and after the announcement about what this will mean to the hundreds of IBM-clone manufacturers, retailers, and support businesses who continue to put out thousands of PC/XT-class machines per month. There is also concern about what this will mean to the estimated six to nine million computer users who currently own IBM PC/XT-class systems.

Will these six to nine million computer users scrap their present systems and invest another $6000 plus to upgrade to the new hardware and software? Will the PC/XT clone manufacturer find himself with several thousand systems in stock and no one interested in buying one? We’re talking about the future of hundreds of garage-based computer operations who have hopes of becoming the next Apple Computer. Fortunately for those who would try to predict the outcome of this tale of computer intrigue and marketing bad luck, there is an historical precedence to look to.

During the latter 1970s, when IBM was busily occupied being the king of the white-robed mainframe computer priesthood, the microcomputer market, which was still in its infancy, was united under one operating system called CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers). Having computers from different manufacturers run the same operating system was quite a different approach from that of the mainframe and minicomputer industry where each manufacturer had his own proprietary operating system and application software (word-processing and billing programs). Because the microcomputer industry was basically dozens of small no-name electronics firms, they saw the cost effectiveness of producing computers that ran under the same operating system.

If a computer user had a word-processing program that worked on an Altair, for example, chances were, if the Altair ran under CP/M, that his program would work on a Cromemco or North Star or CompuPro, provided they were running under CP/M. Even Apple computer, with its radically different system architecture, found a way to run under CP/M and eventually became the largest base of CP/M systems.

Being under one operating system propelled the microcomputer market forward. It encouraged programmers to write new and more advanced programs because they would be able to sell their work to computer users of more than one machine. This, in turn, encouraged more people to buy the micros to run the “useful” programs, which encouraged the development of more programs. Back before 1981, microcomputers were a happy growing cottage industry. But this growth and potential revenue attracted the attention of someone else.

So in August 1981 IBM introduced its PC (Personal Computer). But rather than bring itself under the blanket of the CP/M compatibility it decided to use an operating system (MSDOS) that had the look and feel of CP/M but was not CP/M compatible. The computer user could not take his word-processing program that worked in his CP/M based computer and use it in the new IBM PC. He would have to either write or purchase a new word-processor to use in the new machine. Previous attempts by other computer manufacturers to introduce computers that were incompatible with CP/M had failed because software programmers didn’t want to get locked into supporting a single manufacturer. But the differences between those other manufacturers and IBM were the three magical initials, I-B-M.

It was understood right away that IBM stood for American big business. If a programmer or hardware supplier could catch a ride on IBM’s coattails then it would mean revenue beyond their wildest garage-industry dreams. IBM, for its part, met the microcomputer industry half way and encouraged independent third-party programmers to write programs for the new machine and allowed independent hardware manufacturers to look over its design and build plug-in circuit boards to run in its machine. Both of these steps were radical departures from its previous practice in the mainframe and minicomputer business. And independent third-party people started lining up to become a part of the IBM phenomenon. The IBM PC/XTs were not the best microcomputers on the market but big business started buying the IBM micros to put on everyone’s desktop. It became a saying in Corporate America that “No one ever got fired for buying IBM.”

By 1982 other computer manufacturers were marketing microcomputers that mimicked the IBM PC and used its operating system, MSDOS. In 1983 Phoenix Technologies introduced a chip (the Phoenix ROM BIOS) that claimed to legally provide 100 percent compatibility with IBM and it’s operating system. CP/M based computer sales began to drop and the introduction of new CP/M software slowed to a trickle. Today it is considered an odd event when a new CP/M product is introduced. Nine months ago freelance writer, Ted Silveira, wrote, when ON! Systems introduced the ON! computer, “Is it possible for someone to successfully introduce a new CP/M compatible computer? And at a time when people are beginning to consider the standard 8088-based PC clone to be obsolete? Can these people be anything but crazy?” (Computer Current, Feb ‘87, p 20). Silveira described the computer as “a dream come to life,” but left the question of whether the system will ever sell in the light of day up to the reader.

backgrounder manual - image by joe bustillos

Plu*Perfect Systems co-founder, Derek McKay, in a recent phone interview put it in more straight forward terms. In 1983 he and Bridger Mitchell introduced an inexpensive CP/M produced called Backgrounder that enabled the computer user to freeze his computer screen, perform a handful of computer tasks, and then return to his original screen. They sold close to 3,000 copies (which was respectable for the CP/M market). Last year they introduced Backgrounder II, which allowed the computer user to switch between two full sized programs without really exiting either (a thing that was unheard of in the CP/M market). They have sold less than 300 copies.

Backgrounder II was called “a revolutionary extension for CP/M computing,” in the Nov. issue of The Computer Shopper, a national computer publication. That article has generated only nine inquiries. “And six of those were for real oddball machines,” McKay said. “Some of them I’d never heard of and others I said, ‘I’m not sure if it’ll run on that.” McKay said the sales at other systems houses that carry CP/M products, such as 12-year veteran of computer development, Advent Products of Anaheim, have pretty much dried up. Even retailers that made the move from CP/M to MSDOS products, such as PeopleTalk Associates of Plano Texas, have gone bust, “owing us money,” McKay added. “Their cost structure wasn’t low enough relative to their discounting. It was basically, the more they sold the more they lost.”

McKay paused and smiled. “I don’t want to sound all doom and gloom. We still get [product] out. They trickle out two or three a week.”

So what is the lesson here? Will these six to nine million PC/XT-class computer users scrap their present systems and invest another $6000 plus to upgrade to the new hardware and software? Remember the CP/M user that couldn’t use his word-processing program on the original IBM PC? Will the PC/XT clone manufacturer find himself with several thousand systems in stock and no one interested in buying one? McKay said that he had 200 Backgrounder II manuals lying around that he can’t get rid of. Will PS/2 & OS/2 make the IBM PC/XT & clones into a CP/M story?

Eleven-year veteran of the microcomputer market on the West Coast, Priority One Electronics, has catered to the needs of the microcomputer user and hobbyist since the days when S-100 boards and 8” floppy disk drives were quite the fashion (in the pre-IBM days). Today, in addition to their oscilloscopes and Hewlett Packard scientific calculators (they’re one of the few firms that still supports the computer hobbyist) they are now retailing the newer Apple Macintosh and 80386-based personal computers. Patrick Gatward, a salesman who has been with P1E for three and one half years, said in a recent phone interview that IBM’s announced new line of computers hasn’t affected P1E in the least.

“I don’t see it eliminating anything at all,” said Gatward. “Matter of fact, I think there’s a big market for low end PCs where people in the homes say, ‘oh gosh, for $599 I can get a complete system, with printer and everything.’ I think after a while it’ll be like a typewriter where all the people will have one in their home no matter what,” Gatward said.

Gatward said that for someone to think that IBM’s new PS/2 line is going to eliminate the PC/XT-clones is “like saying a guy can walk in and buy a stereo but might not be able to buy an album any more ‘cause they have cassettes out now.”

Another veteran of the microcomputer wars, Greg Fisher, who has been with Advent Products of Anaheim for its twelve years, said in a recent phone interview that the PC/XT-clones will eventually be phased out, “but not in the same way that it happened to CP/M, because CP/M was replaced.” Fisher said that MSDOS is an “evolving market. The lower power computers were replaced by the more highly powered computers, which are faster but are still functionally identical. You can take a 386[-based computer, which makes up the newest of the IBM line up] today and run the software from the original PC from 1981 on that computer. So, they will be only out done as a 1961 Corvair is out done by an Acura today. They’re still both viable.”

Fisher agreed with Gatward that the present PC/XT-clone user should be able to find software to run on his system for the foreseeable future. The only thing that might change this is if IBM’s PS/2 line really catches on. Fisher said, “I don’t think that it’s going to. I think there’s too much market resistance to be told, ‘now you’ve got to scrap everything up to this point and look at something entirely different.’”

One of the selling points of the new IBM PS/2 line is its ability to do several computing tasks at once, or multitasking. McKay, of Plu*Perfect Systems, and a dozen randomly sampled PC/XT-clone vendors and users said that they feel that that capability is going to prove useful in only the big business market where an office manager might want to tie several keyboards and screens to a single computer (sounds an awful lot like a minicomputer).

McKay, whose Backgrounder II product had pseudo-multitasking, said that what the people really “want is instantaneous recall of a program and they want interruptability. I don’t much need multitasking apart perhaps from networking and communications for any background task.” He said, “there are several real time activities that you would like to run [in the background or multitask]. One is print spooling, network communication, and perhaps modem communication. Those are the only categories that I can think of that warrant real time multitasking.”

“Most people I know,” he said, “can’t run [simple MS]DOS. Give them anything that’s got more conceptual complexity, anything that’s got multitasking has got conceptual complexity, it doesn’t matter if you bring it out through a Windows picture interface, there’s still several things going on at once. Yeah, most people don’t juggle and rub their tummy at the same time.”

Will the PC/XT end up like its CP/M predecessor? Will the PC/XT be technology’s next dinosaur? According to McKay and a dozen other randomly sampled PC/XT-clone retailers and users, the answer is “no.”

They are of the opinion that the PC/XT-class machine is more than adequate for word-processing, data processing, bookkeeping and other tasks that the average home to middle business user is going to need. According to this group, the need for an AT (Advanced Technology) or 386-class machine is only felt in the specialized fields were heavy graphics are needed such as in the CAD (computer aided design) and desktop publishing or where a multiuser environment is required, but that’s strictly big business, they said.

Resources:

• image: Old TV’s and computer monitors, http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=computers&ex=1&ctt=1#ai:MP900437246| retrieved 11/12/2011.
• image: OS/2 logo, http://www.paul-rand.com/site/ibm/ retrieved 11/12/2011.

IBM Personal System/2, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_System/2 retrieved 11/11/2011.

image: OS/2 logo, http://www.paul-rand.com/site/ibm/ retrieved 11/12/2011.

image: File:Ibm px xt color.jpg, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ibm_px_xt_color.jpg  retrieved 11/11/2011.

video: Computer Chronicles > IBM Personal System 2, http://www.archive.org/details/IBMPerso1987 retrieved 11/11/2011.

After the premature obit-twitter post from What’s Trending a few weeks ago, I searched twitter and news-sites to make sure that this wasn’t another hoax. Sadly, it wasn’t. My girlfriend and I spent most of the rest of the night watching Leo Laporte‘s TWiT.TV Live coverage of the event. As much as I know that many outside of the tech field won’t give a moments pause over this, but watching Laporte and friends, it felt very much like a gathering of the tribe memorializing the passing of one of our best.

Image/Website by Boing Boing

Over the course of the past 18-hours I’ve seen a number of wonderful tributes, stories and creative works related to the life of Steve Jobs. Boing Boing skinned their website to look like an old Mac OS desktop. One of the more interesting posts was by Gizmodo’s Brian Lam who had been in the center of the stolen iPhone 4 controversy last year. His post, titled, Steve Jobs Was Always Kind To Me (Or, Regrets of An Asshole), began with his interaction with Jobs when Lam was new at Gizmodo and how Jobs expressed his fondness for Gizmodo’s geeky coverage of gadgets. The most telling part of the story was that even in the midst of the negotiations to get back the stolen iPhone, when it was apparent that fondness Jobs had for Gizmodo was going to end, as Jobs ended the phone conversation with Lam asking, “”What do you think of it [iPhone4 prototype]?”

Lam said, “It’s beautiful.”

Written tributes abound. Ars technica had it’s staff write about The first time I used an Apple computer was… It was interesting to see how many staffers when back to the Apple ][ and how many were from the macintosh or later iMac eras. The newly reborn BYTE website (formerly magazine) had it's editors and contributors share their memories of Jobs. In a separate BYTE article, Jerry Pournelle, the godfather of all tech-journalism, weighs in on Job's journey and vision that we got one step closer to with the iPhone and iPad. Finally, one of the more touching and insightful comments was posted by John Gruber in his Daring Fireball blog when he recalled the last time he saw Jobs, at last summer's WWDC, and noted new grass-stains on the heels of Job's famous grey New Balance 993 shoes and what that might have meant (Universe Dented, Grass Underfoot).

None-too-surprising, the visual tributes to the man who believed that technology was at it's best when it empowered our human need to explore and express ourselves through the arts, would find speak out loudly and passionately at Job's passing.

"Eternal Flame" by XKCD

"iSad" by Gregory Wadsworth

"ThankYou Steve" street art in Hollywood - photo posted by rob sheridan

"Thanks Steve" by Jonathan Mak

The Joy of Tech by Nitrozac & Snaggy

I was lucky enough to have attended the 2007 Macworld keynote when Jobs unveiled the iPhone and one in 2000 when Jobs had just returned to Apple, became iCEO and introduce OS X to the world. One thing that has stayed with me about the 2007 keynote, besides the energy in the room when the iPhone was revealed, but at one point when there was a technology glitch and Jobs had to riff a bit while the minions fixed whatever had fouled up behind the curtain. Jobs got to talk about how he and Woz would pull pranks in the old days and there was a definite sense of nostalgia in that moment with an equal sense that this was going to be another moment to be remembered for a long time. I won’t soon forget that I was there when the iPhone was introduced to the world.

I never met the man personally but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t felt the pressure wave from the dent he left in the universe. Gone too soon, but never to be forgotten, he will live on in the lives of millions who know that this thing is about something more important than a technological device or an American corporation. He believed in a place where Liberal Arts intersected with Science and Technology for the betterment of the human soul. Some thought that was just hype and marketing, a reality distortion field. I choose to believe that this little wedge in history, the Apple/Jobs Phenomenon, is an opportunity for us to remember and do the great things that humans can do when we get past our prejudices and fears. Steven Paul Jobs 1955-2011, thanks for leading the way. It’s our turn to live different(ly).

Sources:

• image: Thanks Steve by Jonathan Mak, http://jmak.tumblr.com/post/9377189056 retrieved 10/5/2011.
• youtube video: Steve Jobs’ Think Different Tribute Video by Fuego7, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeN5TJxxX2E retrieved 10/5/2011.
• image: Steve Jobs has died by boing boing, http://boingboing.net/2011/10/05/steve-jobs-has-died.html retrieved on 10/6/2011.
• article: Steve Jobs Was Always Kind To Me (Or, Regrets of An Asshole) by Brian Lam, http://thewirecutter.com/2011/10/steve-jobs-was-always-kind-to-me-or-regrets-of-an-asshole/retrieved on 10/6/2011.
• article: The first time I used an Apple computer was… by ars technica, http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/10/the-first-time-i-used-an-apple-computer-was.ars retrieved on 10/6/2011.
• article: BYTE Remembers Steve Jobs by BTYE staff, http://www.informationweek.com/byte/news/personal-tech/consumer-services/231900188 retrieved 10/6/2011.
• article: Steve Jobs: Jerry Pournelle Reflects by Jerry Pournelle, http://www.informationweek.com/byte/commentary/personal-tech/smart-phones/231600299 retrieved on 10/6/2011.
• article: Universe Dented, Grass Underfoot by John Gruber, http://daringfireball.net/2011/10/universe_dented_grass_underfoot retrieved on 10/6/2011.
• image: eternal flame by XKCD, http://xkcd.com/961/ retrieved 10/6/2011.
• image: iSad by Gregory Wadsworth, http://twitter.com/#!/aggregart/ retrieved on 10/6/2011
• image: “ThankYou Steve” street art in Hollywood – photo posted by rob sheridan, http://instagr.am/p/PcYQs retrieved 10/8/2011.
• image: The Joy of Tech by Nitrozac & Snaggy, http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/1600.html, retrieved 10/10/2011.
• youtube video: Macworld keynote 2007: Introducing the new iPhone PART 1, posted by leocg, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ftf4riVJyqw#! retrieved on 10/8/2011.
• article: MacWorld Bound – Hurry Up and Wait by Joe Bustillos, http://joebustillos.com/2007/01/08/macworld-bound-hurry-up-and-wait/ retrieved on 10/6/2011.
• article: MacWorld 2007 Debrief by Joe Bustillos, http://joebustillos.com/2007/01/28/macworld-debrief/ retrieved 10/6/2011.
• article: Steve Jobs Macworld 2008 Keynote in 60 Seconds by Joe Bustillos, http://joebustillos.com/2008/01/25/steve-jobs-macworld-2008-keynote-in-60-seconds/ retrieved on 10/6/2011.
• youtube video: To Steven Jobs on His Thirtieth Birthday, uploaded by technologizer, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=d1uMcVl8NQ4 retrieved 10/10/2011.
• youtube video: TWiT Live Specials 95: Tribute And Remembrance Of Steve Jobs by twit, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u_V9MIPBP0&feature=channel_video_title and http://twit.tv/show/twit-live-specials/95 retrieved 10/6/2011.
• Steve Jobs Documentary 2010 posted by computertwit, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgiEG-NsAB0&NR=1 retrieved 10/17/2011.

Uploaded by anthodium on Jun 4, 2010

I was cleaning out my VHS tapes and stumbled upon this time capsule: a 1994 infomercial on “high-tech gifts for Father’s Day.” Most segments were hilarious: enormous cellular phone, $400 Sega CD game system, large monochrome laptop, etc. In this segment: “Hot New technology: The Internet/”

Me: Love the Wired plug with their cutting edge offices and all those tube CRTs. “Wired”… Me… I prefer Wire-less.

To get a sense of how TWiT has grown please check out this first video meant to share the “over the top” podcasting set-up that Leo had in his post-Tech-TV studio:

Following is one of the better Behind-the-Scenes videos of the TWiT cottage (hosted by Mostly Lisa, Lisa Bentley certainly doesn’t hurt). In the TWiT Cottage era Leo’s studio operations expanded from the upstairs office to the whole building (including the original upstairs office):

So… now that TWiT is now a full-on “network” of over 20 podcasts, they’ve completely outgrown the cottage and are about to move into their own building…

Sources:

• Systm 4 – Inside TWiT Studio(s): The Upstair Version, http://youtu.be/cX74k1v2ZVU retrieved 7/7/2011
• Mostly Lisa’s Tour of the TWiT Cottage, http://youtu.be/k_Z-ybl0CtE retrieved 7/7/2011
• TWiT-TV Studios Tour Under Construction, http://youtu.be/TJlkXbaHGmk retrieved 7/7/2011
• How Leo Laporte Builds a Media Empire and a Tour of His Future Studio, http://youtu.be/vokM_qFpMTI retrieved 7/7/2011

Just in case you have forgotten how hard it was to make a book in the modern printing press era. Now that going from finished manuscript to e-book has reduced the process by at least 1,000 steps, AND no longer requires the army of workers and physical materials why has the price to get books to customers not fallen? Oh yeah, antiquated business models. FAIL.

I have been lucky enough to attend several Macworld expo keynotes, particularly one in 2000, early in Steve Jobs’ return to Apple when he announced OS X and the 2007 macworld when the iPhone was first announced. After watching the Bloomberg episode I was inspired to relive the 2000 keynote in seven-minute segments via YouTube. It’s been a long strange journey indeed. So, whether your are a veteran of 6502 or Z80 era or someone who just recently became aware of Apple after seeing all those crazy lines at the mall whenever they do that iPhone thingy, check out Bloomberg TV’s Game Changers: Steve Jobs.

For further info check out the following resources:

Books:
Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can’t Get a Date, by Bob Cringely.

Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World’s Most Colorful Company, by Owen Linzmayer and Owen W. Linzmayer

Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer, by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine.

Inside Steve’s Brain, Expanded Edition, by Leander Kahney

iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It, by Steve Wozniak

Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made, by Andy Hertzfeld.

The Soul of A New Machine, by Tracy Kidder.

DVDs:
Macheads: A FanBoy Documentary, by Kobi Shely.

Triumph of the Nerds, by Bob Cringely.

Welcome to Macintosh by Rober Baca and Joshua Rizzo.

Online Videos:
All Things Digital, D5 VIDEO: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Prologue

All Things Digital, D8 Video: Steve Jobs on Flash, Adobe and Other Technology Apple Doesn’t Use Anymore

Bloomberg Game Changers: Steve Jobs

In Bad Faith, part 8: The Case for God – Not What You Think

I think that Armstrong did such a great job summarizing the book in her NPR/Fresh Air interview that the book feels a bit ponderous. What I mean is that this is a book that one really needs to pay attention to and no play as background music (ack, stupid multitasking lifestyle). Armstrong takes the reader from the very beginning evidences of “god thoughts” found in the pre-historic caves of Lascaux, to the new-atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, spending a goodly bit of time going through the Greek, Asian, and post-medieval schools of thought that may not be familiar to the reader.

So, as a former Loyola Marymount religious studies major with a B.A. in Biblical Studies from Biola University and several quarters of study at Fuller Seminary toward an MA in Theology and a piss-pour background in the Greek and Latin Classics (no ones fault but my own), I greatly appreciated Armstrong’s academic, non-polemic, recitation of pre-history and history of religion on this planet. Yeah, that’s the scope of this book. I’m very interested in her other books on Islam and Buddhism to see how deep she dives into these religions where I’m greatly lacking in my own understanding.

Thoughts that struck me as I listened to the book, mainly how every generation and every great thinker felt compelled to re-interpret God based on their own recent history, cultural and personal, and their own cultural problems. For example, how different would modern Christianity be if Augustine had not had such a problem with his pre-conversion sexual appetites, how would the relationship between God and man be cast differently if Augustine hadn’t promoted the idea of Original Sin and demonized sexuality in general, making it a sin except for the purpose of conception? What would have happened if Emperor Constantine had not chosen to use Christianity as a unify force in his divided empire, thus forcing provincial Christianity to agree on which books belonged in the scriptures, the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth and what would be orthodox and what would be heretical? How differently would history have been had Christianity remained a Jewish sect instead of a world political power? And every time there was a political or natural disaster there seemed to be gigantic shifts in thought with conservatives abandoning the silent God and liberal’s looking for a literal simplistic God to find comfort from.

The greatest error in our search for the Divine seems to be that all of us, skeptic and believer, have made the mistake of assuming that our understanding of religion and the Divine has always been the way we presently see things. Biblical inerrancy, literal divine intervention, God as a Being, the idea of One Truth, religion as belief system instead of daily practice, the after-life, rationalism versus belief: these are all tenets of faith that many of us hold onto believing that changing any one of them invalidates the whole idea of Faith. And yet, many of these ideas have a date in history when they caught on, thus showing that there was a time when people did not, for example, hold to the idea that there was only one truth or that the scriptures had to be perfect in every word and teaching. It might be surprising to some that there have been faithful Christians who do not believe that Jesus was God incarnate. I know, shock. In fact, not at all like the superstitious primitives who saw gods in every stone and stick, it may surprise some that some ancients understood that one could not reduce God to Person because God doesn’t make sense as someone like themselves only bigger.

So, are you tired of the literalistic infantile religion that you find on the TV day and night? Are you unconvinced that it’s NOT all DNA and chemical reactions? Are you tired of the petty divisive warring between small minded sects with guns? Well, then maybe it’s time, in the words of Neo, to free ones mind from narrow assumptions of ones cultural and personal past and entertain thoughts that it’s a much bigger universe than one can even understand, but that one is a part of this much bigger existence.

Also, it should go without saying that it’s long past time for fat self-absorbed Christians to get over themselves and express their beliefs beginning by welcoming a Muslim into their home and giving a good portion of their wealth away to the poor and shut the hell up until they’ve done the first things that their Messiah told them to do. Additionally, It’s past time for the faithful from all beliefs to stop letting the Fundamentalists misrepresent what the Founders of their Faith intended. Rest assured, when you kill, hate or persecute in the name of God, you aren’t speaking or acting for any god beyond your own personal sickness. And that goes for those of you who hate someone who doesn’t agree with your politics or, horror of horrors, doesn’t agree with your sexuality (or lack thereof). To use a phrase popular with a few friends, if the founders could, they’d bitch-slap these presumptive crazies. Oh wait, that’d just lend credence toward their belief in rewarding violence for violence. Oh what the hell, slap away!

god help us! Getting back to Armstrong’s book; Meaning and data, mythos and logos, it’s not a mistake that every culture has examples of this phenomenon. Funny, thinking of previous readings, it’s a bit like the left and right hemispheres of the human brain, we don’t do particularly well when only one hemisphere is “in charge.” The same would seem to be true of human cultures that advocate only one way of understanding reality, religion or secularism. As with the human mind, the two parts must communicate and influence each other or the whole will suffer and fail. Interesting. This business of God and religion is not at all what i would have at first thought.

Karen Armstrong at TED: The Golden Rule

Sources:
image: Karen Armstrong. http://shelleyadelle.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/belief-to-love-to-prize-to-hold-dear/ retrieved on 3/11/2010

image: Padre.jpg microsoft clipart

TED video: Karen Armstrong: Let’s revive the Golden Rule. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/karen_armstrong_let_s_revive_the_golden_rule.html retrieved on 3/11/2010