[GTALUG] Netflix Recommendation - HCF

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Ken Heard via talk <talk at gtalug.org>

| On 2018-01-06 06:03, R360 Design INC via talk wrote:
| 
| > Wanted to recommend the AMC Series "Halt and Catch Fire" on Netflix.
| > For those who haven't heard of it, it is an American period drama that
| > depicts a fictionalized insider's view of the personal computer
| > revolution of the 1980s and later the growth of the World Wide Web in
| > the early 1990s. It offered an insider's glimpse into the power
| > struggles from Silicon Prairie of Dallas=E2=80=93Fort Worth to Silicon =
| Valley.
| 
| Has anybody written a factual history of said revolution?

Millions of fawning accounts have been written about the successes and
some about spectacular failures.  The reality is that much unfolded
because when it's time to railroad, everyone railroads.

Books are almost always better than movies or TV series.  Scholarly
papers are even better.  Interviews with participants are fascinating
but need to be pieced together like jigsaw puzzles pieces that don't
quite fit.

For example, you only hear about the hacker communities at MIT and in the
SF bay area (see Hackers by Stephen Levy).  But there were probably
hackers everywhere (I was part of a community of such in Toronto and
in Waterloo).  Note: I'm talking about the original meaning of Hacker.

The bit of HCF that I saw was about inter-personal politics.  The
setting was a recreation, with accuracy of little importance (they did
try for some verisimilitude but cool and sexy were higher priorities).

A fundamental problem is that reality isn't a narrative and it must be
shaped into one to make a satisfying drama.

Here's how I see the forces at the time:

- the IBM PC was not a great technical step forward BUT it set a
  template around which everyone could standardize.  The network effect.

- how much could you legally copy the PC?

  + Many many companies copied 99%, making better and cheaper
    machines, (Ottawa's Hyperion was a lovely example).
    But the market wanted 100% compatibility.

  + precise copying was a matter for the courts.  It was not a
    technical problem.  Cautious people assumed that it would
    violate IP laws.

- how much uniformity was required?  I always underestimated this.
  MS Flight Simulator had to run unchanged.

- some little things are consequential and some big things are not.
  At the time, you cannot know.

At the time, I was holding out for a computer that could run Unix.
DOS wasn't interesting.  I did buy a Kaypro II (Z80 CPU, CP/M OS) for
office tasks (word processing, spreadsheets, remote access to a
computer) a little after the IBM PC came out but before there were
clones. It cost significantly less than half a PC and performed just
as well.  It just wasn't the future.

I thought that the future would be the technically best machines
possible.  I was so wrong.

The Xerox Alto and the Apple Lisa looked a lot more interesting and
useful than the IBM PC.  The story of Xerox PARC has been told, but
not in film as far as I know.