Even before I started reading Artemis, I listened to an interview of Andy Weir who recommended ‘Ready Player One’ by Ernest Klein as a must read. Spielberg must have thought so, too, because he’s doing a movie on the book which is coming out this April. But I’m not a great fan of movie adaptations, … Continue reading Book Review: Ready Player One
Back in summer 2015 I read “The Martian” by Andy Weir and I found it so extraordinary that I read it in 2 days flat. I can’t remember when I’ve done that the last time. Now his latest novel is out: Artemis. I didn’t actually notice it at first, my ad filters seem to work … Continue reading Book Review – Artemis
It’s winter time in Europe which means its dark and cold right now. While I mostly write about books I’ve read that deal with past and present communication technology and computing, I thought I’d make an exception today for a different book on a totally unrelated topic I recently read that fits the season. My … Continue reading Book Review – Farthest North by Fridtjof Nansen
Just shortly before I got my first computer back in the mid-1980s, Steven Levy wrote “Hackers”. The book has become so famous over the years that there’s quite a long entry about it on Wikipedia. I’m not sure why I haven’t picked it up earlier as the story of the book ends just by the … Continue reading Book Review – Hackers by Steven Levy
From the number of book reviews it must seem that I do quite a bit of reading these days. However, it’s not more than usual, I just have some catch-up to do. Back in 2015 I had a post on “Diary of an 80s computer geek“, a book not about events that shaped computing history … Continue reading Book Review – A Terrible Nerd
Another book I recently read about the history of computing is “When Computing Got Personal” by Matt Nicholson. It took me quite a bit to get around to this one because its approach is more holistic than the books I have read before about specific events of companies. Also it’s not as ‘Valley’ centric than … Continue reading Book Review – When Computing Got Personal
15 years ago back in 2002, Linux Torvalds wrote his auto-biography together with David Diamond and the book has been on my reading list for quite some time now. Recently I finally got around to it. Written back in 2002, the book itself is now a historical artifact and it’s interesting to read it from … Continue reading Book Review – Just For Fun – Linus Torvalds Auto-Biography
Moving on from the ‘Home Computer Wars’, I bought a copy of ‘iWoz’, Steve Wozniack’s autobiography written in 2006 to find out more about the early computer industry during the 1970’s and 80’s. You can find a good synopsis of the book on Wikipedia so I won’t repeat the exercise here. Instead, as with previous … Continue reading Book Review: iWoz
After reading Andy Hertzfeld’s book about Apple and how the first Macintosh came to be in the first part of the 1980s, I thought it would be a good idea to get a perspective of the same time frame by someone working in another computer company. So my choice fell on “The Home Computer Wars“, … Continue reading Book Review – The Home Computer Wars
I’m not and I never was never a great Apple fanboy. When I was a teenager in the second half of the 1980s, the Apple Macintosh still cost several thousand euros and was hence far beyond what I could afford. Like most, my computing world was that of Commodore, Atari and others who offered affordable … Continue reading Book Review: Revolution In The Valley