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by Margaret O'Mara


  10. Dean Brown, “Learning Environments for Young Children,” ACM SIGCUE Outlook 4, no. 4 (August 1970): 2.

  11. Kevin Savetz, ANTIC Interview 38 – “Liza Loop, Technical Writer,” ANTIC: The Atari 8-bit Podcast, April 27, 2015, http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-38-liza-loop-technical-writer, archived at https://perma.cc/8C93-AZPP; Loop, interview with Nick Demonte, July 19, 2013.

  12. Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1984); Ron Rosenbaum, “Secrets of the Little Blue Box,” Esquire 76, no. 4 (October 1971): 116. On the relationship between Vietnam-era countercultural politics and the emergence of the personal computer, as well as a much deeper dive into the lives and careers of the people discussed in this chapter, see Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006); Markoff, What the Dormouse Said; and Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (New York: HarperBusiness, 1999).

  13. Lee Felsenstein, “Resource One/Community Memory—1972–1973,” http://www.leefelsenstein.com/?page_id=44 archived at https://perma.cc/4K8U-2BG3; Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture, 69–102; Claire L. Evans, Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet (New York: Portfolio / Penguin, 2018), 95–108.

  14. People’s Computer Company 1, no. 1 (October 1972): 5, digitized online at the DigiBarn Computer Museum, http://www.digibarn.com/collections/newsletters/peoples-computer/peoples-1972-oct/index.html, archived at https://perma.cc/57DQ-L4FW.

  15. Theodor H. (Ted) Nelson, Computer Lib (independently published, 1974; reprinted by Tempus Books of Microsoft Press, 1987), 30; Andreas Kitzmann, “Pioneer Spirits and the Lure of Technology: Vannevar Bush’s Desk, Theodor Nelson’s World,” Configurations 9, no. 3 (September 2001): 452. “Nelson was the Tom Paine and his book was the Common Sense of the revolution,” Michael Swaine and Paul Freiberger write in their definitive history, Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer, 3rd ed. (Raleigh, N.C.: The Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2014), 103. Also see Robert Glenn Howard, “How Counterculture Helped Put the ‘Vernacular’ in Vernacular Webs,” in Folk Culture in the Digital Age: The Emergent Dynamics of Human Interaction, ed. Trevor J. Blank (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2012), 25–46. Nelson’s mother was the Hollywood actress Celeste Holm.

  16. Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture.

  17. Steven Lubar, “‘Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate’: A Cultural History of the Punch Card,” Journal of American Culture 15, no. 4 (Winter 1992): 43–55; Charles E. Silberman, “Is Technology Taking Over?,” Fortune, February 1966, reprinted in The Myths of Automation, eds. Silberman and the editors of Fortune (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 97.

  18. Vance Packard, The Naked Society (New York: David McKay, 1964; repr., New York: Ig Publishing, 2014), 29–30.

  19. Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, trans. John Wilkinson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964).

  20. Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (New York: Random House, 1970), 186.

  21. Henry Raymont, “‘Future Shock’: The Stress of Great, Rapid Change,” The New York Times, July 24, 1970, 28; Toffler, Future Shock, 155.

  22. Sanford J. Ungar, Review of Future Shock, The Washington Post, August 7, 1970, B8; “Mom,” The Washington Post, April 12, 1970, N2.

  23. Toffler, Future Shock, 125.

  24. Congressional Record 116, part 155, Sept. 8, 1970, 1662.

  25. Neil Gallagher, “The Right to Privacy,” speech delivered before the Institute of Management Sciences, Chicago Chapter, March 26, 1969, reprinted in Vital Speeches of the Day 35 (1969): 528–29; Gallagher, “The Computer as ‘Rosemary’s Baby,’” Computers and Society 1, no. 2 (April 1970): 1–12.

  26. Berezin to Gallagher, January 10, 1967, encl. Berezin to Editors of Datamation, January 6, 1967, Box 21, FF 16, Cornelius Gallagher Papers, Carl Albert Center Archives, The University of Oklahoma; Baran quoted in John Lear, “Whither Personal Privacy?” The Saturday Review, July 23, 1966, 36.

  27. Privacy: The Collection, Use, and Computerization of Personal Data: Joint Hearings before the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Privacy and Information Systems of the Committee on Government Operations and the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Ninety-Third Congress, Second Session, June 18, 19, and 20, 1974 (1974), 114–16.

  28. Public Law 93-579, Ninety-third Congress, S. 3418, December 31, 1974.

  29. Scott R. Schmedel, “Computer Convention Will Skip Esoterica and Focus on Layman,” The Wall Street Journal, August 21, 1970, 4.

  30. Charles Reich, excerpt from The Greening of America, The New Yorker, September 26, 1970, 42; E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (London: Blond & Briggs, 1973).

  31. Philip A. Hart quoted in “The Industrial Reorganization Act: An Antitrust Proposal to Restructure the American Economy,” Columbia Law Review 73, no. 3 (March 1973): 635; Michael O’Brien, Philip Hart: The Conscience of the Senate (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1996). The IBM antitrust suit dragged on until 1982, when it was dropped by the Reagan Administration; for a comprehensive history, see Franklin M. Fisher, John J. McGowan, and Joen E. Greenwood, Folded, Spindled and Mutilated: Economic Analysis and U.S. vs. IBM (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1983).

  32. Statement of Thomas R. Parkin, Vice President, Software, Control Data Corporation, in Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, The Industrial Reorganization Act: Hearings, Ninety-third Congress, S. 1167 (1974), 4868.

  CHAPTER 9: THE PERSONAL MACHINE

  1. Nancy L. Steffen, “King Calls for Further Action Before Crowd of Over 1800,” The Stanford Daily 145, no. 43 (April 24, 1964): 1; Jon Roise, “Activists Come Home: Students Working in Strike,” The Stanford Daily 148, no. 9 (October 6, 1965): 2; Bob Davis, “SNCC’s Stokely Carmichael Will Lead Black Power Day,” The Stanford Daily 150, no. 23 (October 25, 1966): 1; Nick Selby, “Crowd a Problem for Secret Service,” The Stanford Daily 151, no. 17 (February 21, 1967): 1; “Peace Vigil,” The Stanford Daily 152, no. 30 (November 2, 1967): 5; Gary Atkins, “Attacked for Politics, Policies; Critics Center on Hoover Boss,” The Stanford Daily 160, no. 52 (January 7, 1972): 1.

  2. Don Kazak, “Stanford University Under Siege,” Palo Alto Times, April 13, 1994, https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news_features/centennial/1960SD.php archived at https://perma.cc/P6C8-K54R.

  3. Douglas C. Engelbart and William K. English, “A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect,” in American Federation of Information Processing Societies, Proceedings of the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference, San Francisco, Calif., December 9–11, 1968, 395–410; Jane Howard, “Inhibitions Thrown to the Gentle Winds,” Life Magazine 65, no. 2 (July 12, 1968): 56; Paul Saffo, interview with the author, March 24, 2017, by phone.

  4. Robert E. Kantor and Dean Brown, “On-Line Computer Augmentation of Bio-Feedback Processes,” International Journal of Bio-Medical Computing 1, no. 4 (November 1970): 265–75; Saffo quoted in Michael Swaine and Paul Freiberger, Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer, 3rd ed. (Raleigh, N.C.: The Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2014), 265.

  5. “Xerox Plans Laboratory for Research in California,” The New York Times, March 24, 1970, 89.

  6. Lynn Conway, “Reminiscences of the VLSI Revolution,” IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine 4, no. 4 (Fall 2012): 12. Immediately prior to PARC, Conway had worked briefly for Ed Zschau at System Industries.

  7. Stewart Brand, “Spacewar: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums,” Rolling Stone, December 7, 1972, 33–39; Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 118.

  8. A
definitive profile of Taylor at PARC is found in Leslie Berlin, Troublemakers: Silicon Valley’s Coming of Age (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), 89–106.

  9. Swaine and Freiberger, Fire in the Valley, 102–06.

  10. Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), excerpted in “Ivan Illich: Inverting Politics, Retooling Society,” The American Poetry Review 2, no. 3 (May /June 1973): 51–53.

  11. Lee Felsenstein, “Tom Swift Lives!,” People’s Computer Company, c. 1974, 14–15; Felsenstein, “The Tom Swift Terminal or, A Convivial Cybernetic Device,” c. 1975, http://www.leefelsenstein.com/?page_id=82, archived at https://perma.cc/Q3DM-DPFW.

  12. “Ivan Illich: Inverting Politics,” 52.

  13. Lee Felsenstein quoted in Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture, 114.

  14. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Divorces and Divorce Rates: United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, April 1980).

  15. Southern California Computer Society, Interface 1, no. 1 (September 1975), Box 1, Liza Loop Papers M1141, SU; John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Penguin, 2005), 273–75.

  16. Liza Loop, “Inside the ‘Technical Loop,’” Dana Bulletin 58, no. 1 (Summer 1996); interview with Nick Demonte, July 19, 2013; both archived at https://perma.cc/X6RA-T5TN; Kevin Savetz, ANTIC Interview 38 – “Liza Loop, Technical Writer,” ANTIC: The Atari 8-bit Podcast, April 27, 2015, http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-38-liza-loop-technical-writer, archived at https://perma.cc/8C93-AZPP.

  17. Sol Libes, “The S-100 Bus: Past, Present, and Future,” Part I, InfoWorld 2, no. 3 (March 17, 1980): 7.

  CHAPTER 10: HOMEBREWED

  1. Homebrew Computer Club, Newsletter, no. 1 (March 15, 1975), reproduced in Len Shustek, “The Homebrew Computer Club 2013 Reunion,” Computer History Museum, December 17, 2013, http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/the-homebrew-computer-club-2013-reunion/, archived at https://perma.cc/RZ9J-M6ZN.

  2. On the activism of Fred Moore, see John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said:: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Penguin, 2005), 31–40, 186–96; Lee Felsenstein, oral history interview by Kip Crosby, edited by Dag Spicer, May 7, 2008, CHM, 16.

  3. Shustek, “The Homebrew Computer Club 2013 Reunion.”

  4. Markoff, What the Dormouse Said, 272, 274; Felsenstein, oral history interview, 24.

  5. Felsenstein, oral history interview, 23.

  6. Moore, “Amateur Computer Users Group,” Homebrew Computer Club, Newsletter, no. 2 (April 12, 1975), Box 1, M1141, Liza Loop Papers, SU.

  7. Byte 1, no. 1 (September 1975); Michael Swaine and Paul Freiberger, Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer, 3rd ed. (Raleigh, N.C.: The Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2014), 184–86.

  8. Swaine and Freiberger, Fire in the Valley, 194–95; Jim Warren, “We, the People, in the Information Age,” January 1, 1991, Dr. Dobb’s Journal, http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/we-the-people-in-the-information-age/184408478, archived at https://perma.cc/KPN4-PSCW.

  9. Homebrew Computer Club, Newsletter, no. 3 (May 10, 1975), 4, Liza Loop Papers, SU; John Doerr, “Low-cost microcomputing: The personal computer and single-board computer revolutions,” Proceedings of the IEEE 66, no. 2 (February 1978): 129.

  10. Dr. Dobb’s Journal 2, no. 2 (February 1976), 2; Liza Loop Papers, M1141, FF 2, Box 1, SU; Warren, “We, the People”; Swaine and Freiberger, Fire in the Valley, 188–189.

  11. Doerr, “Low-cost microcomputing.”

  12. Albert Yu, interview, September 15, 2005, Atherton, Calif., Silicon Genesis Project, SU.

  13. Homebrew Computer Club, Newsletter, no. 3 (May 10, 1975), 4, Liza Loop Papers, SU; Doerr, “Low-cost microcomputing.”

  14. Lou Cannon, “The Puzzling Politics of Jerry Brown,” The Washington Post, February 5, 1978, B1.

  15. Duane Elgin and Arnold Mitchell, “Voluntary Simplicity,” Planning Review 5, no. 6 (1977), 13–15; Joshua Clark Davis, From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017).

  CHAPTER 11: UNFORGETTABLE

  1. Sol Libes, “The S-100 Bus: Past, Present, and Future,” InfoWorld 2, no. 3 (March 17, 1980,): 6.

  2. Libes, “The S-100 Bus”; Michael Swaine and Paul Freiberger, Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer, 3rd ed. (Raleigh, N.C.: The Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2014), 112–18.

  3. Lee Felsenstein, oral history interview by Kip Crosby, edited by Dag Spicer, May 7, 2008, CHM, 24; Libes, “The S-100 Bus”; Swaine and Freiberger, Fire in the Valley, 119–21.

  4. “Computer Coup,” Time 119, no. 12 (March 22, 1962), 62; Adam Osborne, Running Wild: The Next Industrial Revolution (New York: Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1979), 33–34; Vector Graphic, Inc., “Now. The Perfect Microcomputer,” print advertisement, Byte, July 1977.

  5. Steve Jobs, Speech, Cupertino, Calif., c. 1980, Computer History Museum, Gift of Regis McKenna.

  6. Regis McKenna quoted in Swaine and Freiberger, Fire in the Valley, 217; Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).

  7. Harry McCracken, “Regis McKenna’s 1976 Notebook and the Invention of Apple Computer, Inc.,” Fast Company, April 1, 2016.

  8. “Apple Corporate Story,” Lisa/Macintosh Positioning Memorandum, c. 1983, Apple Computer Inc. Records, 1977–1997, M1007, Series 7, Box 15, FF 3, SU.

  9. McKenna, correspondence with the author, September 6, 2018; “CHM Revolutionaries: Regis McKenna in Conversation with John Markoff,” video, The Computer History Museum, February 6, 2014; Memorandum, June 22, 1976, Regis McKenna Inc. Advertising, reproduced in McCracken, “Regis McKenna’s 1976 Notebook.”

  10. McKenna, correspondence with the author, September 6, 2018; Donald T. Valentine, interview by Sally Smith Hughes, in “Early Bay Area Venture Capitalists: Shaping the Economic and Business Landscape,” Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2009, 33. On Markkula’s pivotal role in launching and growing Apple, see Leslie Berlin, Troublemakers: Silicon Valley’s Coming of Age (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), 146–58, 206–14, 292–307.

  11. McKenna, correspondence with the author, September 6, 2018; Mike Cassidy, “Marketing Pioneer Recalls the Early Days of Apple,” The Seattle Times, September 22, 2008, https://www.seattletimes.com/business/marketing-pioneer-recalls-early-days-of-intel-and-apple/, archived at https://perma.cc/JKN2-RVMA [inactive]; McCracken, “Regis McKenna’s 1976 Notebook.”

  12. McKenna, interview with the author, December 3, 2014; Meeting notes, in private possession of Regis McKenna and reproduced in McCracken, “Regis McKenna’s 1976 Notebook”; “Introducing Apple II,” print ad, Scientific American, September 1977; Luke Dormehl, “This day in tech history: The first Apple II ships,” June 10, 2014, https://www.cultofmac.com/282972/day-tech-history-first-apple-ii-ships/, archived at https://perma.cc/W9K8-BE3J.

  13. Harry McCracken, “Apple II Forever: A 35th-Anniversary Tribute to Apple’s First Iconic Product,” Time, April 16, 2012, http://techland.time.com/2012/04/16/apple-ii-forever-a-35th-anniversary-tribute-to-apples-first-iconic-product/, archived at https://perma.cc/CG5T-987V.

  14. Jim C. Warren, The First West Coast Computer Faire: Proceedings, November 18, 1977, Silicon Valley Ephemera Collection, Series 1, Box 7, FF 2, SU.

  15. Ted Nelson, “Those Unforgettable Next Two Years,” in Warren, The First West Coast Computer Faire: Proceedings, 20–21.

  16. Louise Cook, “Get Ready for Friendly Home Computers,” The Washington Post, November 27, 1977, 166.

  17. Quoted in Swaine and Freiberger, Fire in the Valley, 238.

  18. Lee Dembart, “Computer Show’s Message: ‘Be the First on Your Block,’” The New York Times, August 26, 1977, A10.


  19. Victor K. McElheny, “Computer Show: Preview of More Ingenious Models,” The New York Times, June 16, 1977, D1.

  20. Martin Campbell-Kelly, William Aspray, Nathan Ensmenger, and Jeffrey R. Yost, Computer: A History of the Information Machine (3rd ed.; Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2013), 239.

  21. Bill Gates, “An Open Letter to Hobbyists,” Homebrew Computer Club, Newsletter 2, no. 1 (January 31, 1976), 2, Box 1, M1141, Liza Loop Papers, SU.

  22. Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews, Gates (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1993), 58–60.

  23. Bill Gates, The Road Ahead (New York: Random House, 1995), 44; Manes and Andrews, Gates, 63–71.

  24. Manes and Andrews, Gates, 81.

  25. Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary (San Francisco: O’Reilly Media, 2001).

  26. Christopher Evans, The Micro Millennium (New York: Viking, 1979), 67.

  CHAPTER 12: RISKY BUSINESS

  1. Ian Matthews, “Commodore PET History,” Commodore.ca, February 2003, https://www.commodore.ca/commodore-products/commodore-pet-the-worlds-first-personal-computer/, archived at https://perma.cc/WY6J-UXT5.

  2. “Has the Bear Market Killed Venture Capital?” Forbes, June 15, 1970, 28–37; Margaret A. Kilgore, “Public Urged to Invest in Technology,” The Los Angeles Times, April 13, 1976, D7; Gene Bylinsky, The Innovation Millionaires: How They Succeed (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), 25–46; Gary Klott, “Venture Capitalists Wary of Tax Plan,” The New York Times, January 9, 1985, D1.

  3. David Morgenthaler, interview with the author, November 3, 2015, by phone.

  4. Burt McMurtry, interview with the author, January 15, 2015, Palo Alto, Calif.

  5. Stewart Greenfield, interview with the author, May 19, 2015, by phone.

  6. Reid Dennis, “Early Bay Area Venture Capitalists: Shaping the Economic and Business Landscape,” interviews conducted by Sally Smith Hughes, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, 2009, 43.

 

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