(2005-05-02) Markoff Dormouse

John Markoff's What The Dormouse Said ISBN:0670033820 looks pretty interesting. Douglas Engelbart, Alan Kay, Stewart Brand, Bob Taylor, Fred Moore, etc. (a lot of those same people were discussed in Howard Rheingold's Tools For Thought). If the War On Drugs had started earlier, would there be a PC?

Update: Read it. Much of it is frustratingly-badly written. Lots of bits are basically little 1-paragraph anecdotes - he might as well have put those in sidebars rather than pretending to flow them into a coherent narrative. And he has a horrible habit jumping forward in time for 1 sentence, and without anchoring that forward reference to a clear/precise time ("little did he know that a decade later he'd wear brown pants again."). I guess it's a Markoff Chain of thought.

Update: fresh links from elsewhere:

• Tom Foremski has an description a Markoff book-pimping event at Xerox PARC which turned into an Engelbart love-fest, plus an interview with Engelbart himself.

• Ross Mayfield has related commentary.

Aug'2005 - Doc Searls on the East Coast influences.