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Geeks Bearing Gifts: How the Computer World Got This Way
THE PERFECT GIFT - Whether you love the computer world the way it is, or consider it a nightmare honkytonk prison, you'll giggle and rage at Ted Nelson's telling of computer history, its personalities and infights. Computer movies, music, 3D; the eternal fight between Jobs and Gates; the tangled stories of the Internet and the World Wide Web; all these and more are punchily told in brief chapters on many topics such as The Web Browser Salad, Voting Machines, Google, Web 2.0 and much more. These short stories make great reading - it's a book to dip in and out of. You'll find answers to such questions as # ""Why do alphabets have upper case, why not numbers?"" # ""Why does everything have to be hierarchical on computers? That's not how *my* projects are organized!"" ""Where did WYSIWYG come from?"" The answer will surprise you. Plus, you'll find out why the author, a well-known computer veteran, hopes it can all become much better.
199 pages, Paperback
First published December 17, 2008
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183 people want to read
About the author
Ted Nelson
55 books28 followersSharlene and Ted Nelson have been co-authoring books for twenty years. The Nelsons live in Washington State.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 12, 2009
I didn't enjoy this book very much, nor learn much from it.
It's a brief (200pg) history of the people, ideas, decisions that have lead up to our current use of computer and the net.
His master-narrative is that most people think of the current state as inevitable or governed by the laws of nature, and he's trying to show that it's *more* the outcome of personal visions, decisions, and political battles among those visions and decisions. Therefore we should think more critically about what we want from our net, and not just mindlessly accept/use what's been dumped in our laps. This is a good message, though I'm not sure how actionable it is. Especially because he doesn't really give much of a sense of alternative, except to vaguely note the silly paper-oriented nature of our tools (WYSIWYG is really about WhatYouPrint), vs something he doesn't define (except to note that it supports side-by-side viewing and annotations).
The timeline structure is a bit messy, leading him to tell the entire history of the Microsoft/Apple (desktop) OS battle in one chapter associated with 1977. The PDA/Mobile story then goes into 1983.
As I mentioned in an earlier status note, the book jumbles together factual history with his personal arguments. But the latter is never strongly developed, so you keep feeling like you're getting 1 paragraph chosen at random from a 20-page rant, and you don't know what you've missed.
Douglas Engelbart gets a chapter, which is good. Then a brief description of Xanadu ("simpler than the Web" - really?). Then a rant about the Brown HES project, which was supposed to be an implementation of Xanadu, but was perverted into something broken. But no other discussion of lots of other pre-Web hypertext projects. And when he gets to the Web chapter, no real discussion of why it succeeded vs previous approaches, other than "its rough and beguiling simplicity" (which is probably a fair summary, but too short to convince anyone who doesn't already believe that).
And, while there's a brief mention of Wikipedia within the Web2.0 chapter, there's *no* mention of the Wiki model, and how it supports (local) 2-way linking, and how some people have worked with Transclusion on it, etc.
If you're looking for an *interesting* version of much of this history, I'd probably go with Markoff's *WhatTheDormouseSaid* or Rheingold's *ToolsOfThought*. If you want to learn about Nelson's vision, then read his *LiteraryMachines*.
It's a brief (200pg) history of the people, ideas, decisions that have lead up to our current use of computer and the net.
His master-narrative is that most people think of the current state as inevitable or governed by the laws of nature, and he's trying to show that it's *more* the outcome of personal visions, decisions, and political battles among those visions and decisions. Therefore we should think more critically about what we want from our net, and not just mindlessly accept/use what's been dumped in our laps. This is a good message, though I'm not sure how actionable it is. Especially because he doesn't really give much of a sense of alternative, except to vaguely note the silly paper-oriented nature of our tools (WYSIWYG is really about WhatYouPrint), vs something he doesn't define (except to note that it supports side-by-side viewing and annotations).
The timeline structure is a bit messy, leading him to tell the entire history of the Microsoft/Apple (desktop) OS battle in one chapter associated with 1977. The PDA/Mobile story then goes into 1983.
As I mentioned in an earlier status note, the book jumbles together factual history with his personal arguments. But the latter is never strongly developed, so you keep feeling like you're getting 1 paragraph chosen at random from a 20-page rant, and you don't know what you've missed.
Douglas Engelbart gets a chapter, which is good. Then a brief description of Xanadu ("simpler than the Web" - really?). Then a rant about the Brown HES project, which was supposed to be an implementation of Xanadu, but was perverted into something broken. But no other discussion of lots of other pre-Web hypertext projects. And when he gets to the Web chapter, no real discussion of why it succeeded vs previous approaches, other than "its rough and beguiling simplicity" (which is probably a fair summary, but too short to convince anyone who doesn't already believe that).
And, while there's a brief mention of Wikipedia within the Web2.0 chapter, there's *no* mention of the Wiki model, and how it supports (local) 2-way linking, and how some people have worked with Transclusion on it, etc.
If you're looking for an *interesting* version of much of this history, I'd probably go with Markoff's *WhatTheDormouseSaid* or Rheingold's *ToolsOfThought*. If you want to learn about Nelson's vision, then read his *LiteraryMachines*.
October 27, 2013
brilliantly contrarian!
To get a feel for how good this is, check out his series of computer history lessons on youtube, under the name Computers For Cynics - here's episode 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdnGP...
To get a feel for how good this is, check out his series of computer history lessons on youtube, under the name Computers For Cynics - here's episode 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdnGP...
April 9, 2025
I came into this book with the expectation of something like a crank history and opinion of our computer world, and I got that - somewhat. The chapters are laid out in interesting ways - from negative, to zero, to positive, centering around the invention of Unix. Each chapter is a bit of computer lore interspersed with author commentary, but far too little of it.
I have only heard things here and there about Ted Nelson, with his opinions about the PARC GUI, hypertext, the rigidity of our current OS and UI models, so I came into this book with some preconceived notions. This was likely a mistake on my part, but the kernel of it is there - just look at the last two chapters!
Much of the book is historical and 'factual' and it could have used more author commentary and honestly crankiness. I put 'factual' in quotes because the author makes no bones about his opinions in places and this is welcome. This is the view of not quite an insider, but definitely not a distant third party either. Nelson seems to have known many of the totemic figures through more recent times - Tim Berners-Lee specifically - so he has a ground level view of the evolution of technology via the internet. It isn't until the last two chapters that the author really turns on the big jets and lets loose.
Therein lies my criticism - I could have read a book full of pages like the last two chapters. I am immensely interested in why things are the way they are, specifically with technology, and those two chapters are a great distillation - the 'why' is often a mundane matter, like first to market, or the solution that most matched an existing one; its most often not a matter of wizened experts deciding. Nelson believes in alternatives - there is a Project Xanadu that I need to read up on much more - and we only get a single chapter and sparse references to Xanadu and others like it. I would have appreciated a side-by-side comparison between these models.
I gave it a 2/5 until those last two chapters. Feel like the book could have been much more!
I have only heard things here and there about Ted Nelson, with his opinions about the PARC GUI, hypertext, the rigidity of our current OS and UI models, so I came into this book with some preconceived notions. This was likely a mistake on my part, but the kernel of it is there - just look at the last two chapters!
Much of the book is historical and 'factual' and it could have used more author commentary and honestly crankiness. I put 'factual' in quotes because the author makes no bones about his opinions in places and this is welcome. This is the view of not quite an insider, but definitely not a distant third party either. Nelson seems to have known many of the totemic figures through more recent times - Tim Berners-Lee specifically - so he has a ground level view of the evolution of technology via the internet. It isn't until the last two chapters that the author really turns on the big jets and lets loose.
Therein lies my criticism - I could have read a book full of pages like the last two chapters. I am immensely interested in why things are the way they are, specifically with technology, and those two chapters are a great distillation - the 'why' is often a mundane matter, like first to market, or the solution that most matched an existing one; its most often not a matter of wizened experts deciding. Nelson believes in alternatives - there is a Project Xanadu that I need to read up on much more - and we only get a single chapter and sparse references to Xanadu and others like it. I would have appreciated a side-by-side comparison between these models.
I gave it a 2/5 until those last two chapters. Feel like the book could have been much more!
June 11, 2023
I can't say I got much from this book.
Part of it is rehashing stories that anyone in tech, at least of my age, will already be well aware of. The other part seems to be a collection of sour grapes over technologies that did not win, complaints about the ones that did, and vague 'ideas' about technology that are not well connected, fleshed out, or supported.
I was unfamiliar with Ted prior to being recommended his works and at least from this one publication I don't understand why people find him insightful.
Part of it is rehashing stories that anyone in tech, at least of my age, will already be well aware of. The other part seems to be a collection of sour grapes over technologies that did not win, complaints about the ones that did, and vague 'ideas' about technology that are not well connected, fleshed out, or supported.
I was unfamiliar with Ted prior to being recommended his works and at least from this one publication I don't understand why people find him insightful.
August 6, 2011
A 1-star review of a Ted Nelson book is a sad thing to write. Instead, I'll encourage you to search for a copy of "Computer Lib" and read a historic book that is responsible for kick-starting most of the careers of the senior leaders in our industry today. Everything he predicted came true.
July 24, 2011
Ted Nelson always has something interesting to say.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews