Triumph of the Nerds

Cringly does an excellent job of keeping one interested with humorous anecdotes and trivia. It must have been quite a task getting these innovators on camera. Cringly should come up with an update. It will be interesting to see his take on Netscape, Napster and scam IPOs.

First of all, this doc is from 1996. That being said: it chronicles the rise of the personal computer/home computer beginning in the 1970s with the Altair 8800, Apple II and VisiCalc. It continues through the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh revolution through the 1980s and the mid 1990s at the beginning of the Dot-com boom. The film ends before it all crashes in the late 1999s. But what the heck.

The production of the PBS miniseries "Triumph of the Nerds" as documented by journalist and self professed gossip columnist Robert Cringely is a campy trek through the personal computer revolution. The 3-hour narrative covered many of the notable characters responsible for the PC's development such as the inventive geeks, aspiring college hackers, social radicals, corporate marketeers, and leading up to the inevitable war of wills to bring about global, political, and economic change. The miniseries is as much about the personal computer revolution as it is about the one-upmanship ideology of bringing a better mouse trap to market. Piracy is deemed a good thing by the very players that use corporate legal methods to protect themselves from that very end. By means of reverse engineering, misapplications of patent rights, cleverly worded legal disclosure documents, so called `Virgin' engineers and outright theft of intellectual property; it is a sordid affair indeed. The story reads like a checklist in the PDA of Machiavelli's `The Prince'. It seems that `The Prince' is alive and well in the 21st Century.

I would highly recommend this film to any geek or geek-in-training.

Look also for "The Pirate's of Silicon Valley"

This 2 parts documentary tells the history of the PC and how it developed from big limited box to small advance GUI based machine. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Xerox P.A.R.K researchers all speak about the PC. With the excellent host of Bob :)

Very well made. A must see if you love computers.

This is a story of few very talented people working from their garage launching a mega billion dollar empire. The grass roots development of personal computers in the '70s and '80s are captured in this excellent program. From the development of Altair 8800, Apple II, and launching of Microsoft to the IBM PC, bringing about the change we know today as computer revolution, this program details the early history of personal computer development from an insider's view. All major historical events concerning the early computer revolution is treated fairly and in an unbiased way making this an excellent documentary on history of personal computer development, but it is also presented in a entertaining way that even an average couch potato can enjoy. The major players are all there and there are many good personal interviews which brings insights as to how the event really took place. A priceless piece of computer history in a three hour program.