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Saturday, September 25, 2004
Two documentaries worth watching
After yesterdays entry I though I would point out something for those people interested more in the creation of Excite and computers in general.
Robert X. Cringely did a series of documentaries on computers. The first was on the history of the PC and called Triumph of the Nerds. Later he did a series called Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet about the history and present day Internet. In Nerds 2.0.1, Cringely followed the guys, including Joe Kraus, who founded Excite. It went from their early days in a garage all the way through the public release of Excite. It’s cool to be able to see the stages of the business growing during the dot-com days. I only wish Cringely would do a new series on the current post dot-com bubble burst computer industry. Wouldn’t that be a depressing series!
Anyways, both series are a must have! Anyone claiming to be a computer geek should own and watch them. If you think you know the history of the PC industry because you watched that piece of trash movie that TNT made called Pirates of Silicon Valley you’ll be surprised how much you don’t! Do both yourself and rest of the world a favor. Take a baseball bat and beat yourself in the head till you can’t even remember the name of the movie. Then go get Triumph of the Nerds and Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet. Watch them and actually learn something!
I swear if I see one more message board post where someone uses quotes and/or references from that movie as historical facts about the computer industry I’m going to loose it. Sure the basic story theme and characters are close but many of the historical facts are not right. For the joe movie watcher who wants to know who these Bill Gates or Steve Jobs computer people are it’s an ok movie to introduce them.
I’m just going to stop right here and not go into a rant about the movie since Robert Cringely and even Steve Wozniak can point out the problems better than me.
Now get off your bum and go buy the documentaries!
