Description
The personal computer industry was built on the character flaws of its key players, from Steve Wozniak to Steve Jobs to Mitch Kapor. But Silicon Valley, home of Apple, Atari, and the corporate beer bust, also represents automobiles, energy production, and illegal drugs-the largest manufacturing industry in the world, and one of the last great success stories for American business.
So how exactly do these two images add up the quirkiness of perpetual adolescence, and star performance on the bottom line?
Robert X. Cringely, longtime father confessor for industry secrets, and whose "Notes from the Field" in InfoWorld is eagerly awaited each week from coast to coast, at long last explains it all in this fun, fast-paced, insider's look at high- tech success without adult supervision.
Of course the book has much to say on the likes of Bill Gates, the greasy-haired, grocery coupon-clipping boy billionaire. But Cringely's unique vantage point takes us much deeper into the many sub variants of nerd, revealing, for instance, Adobe Systems as the classic dysfunctional family constrained by its secrets; Microsoft as the frat house that feeds on its young; and Apple, best understood as an episode of "Bonanza," with Steve Jobs as Little Joe.
From their very first days of dumpster diving for spare parts, the founders of the PC business created their very own Wild West Bonanza, an electronic theme park where they made all the rules. They had no idea how businesses were supposed to be run, no sense of what was impossible, so they made it up as they went along, inventing ways of seizing the future through passion, not necessarily profit. Yet their real story has never been documented and told until now.
Chronicling the maturing of this industry, from Xerox PARC to "the last days of IBM," Cringely tells a story of creativity, daring, and ego that's surprising, informative, and uniquely American. Accidental Empires give us much more than high-tech voyeurism and insider gossip. Cringely emerges as a kind of uninvited business consultant to offer nothing less than a prescription for America's ills.
ISBN:9780201570328
