John Markoff's [What The Dormouse Said] ISBN:0670033820 looks pretty interesting. Douglas Engelbart, AlanKay, Stewart Brand, Bob Taylor, [Fred Moore], etc. (a lot of those same people were discussed in Howard Rheingold's Tools For Thought). If the War On Drugs had started earlier, would there be a PC?

Update: Read it. Much of it is frustratingly-badly written. Lots of bits are basically little 1-paragraph anecdotes - he might as well have put those in sidebars rather than pretending to flow them into a coherent narrative. And he has a horrible habit jumping forward in time for 1 sentence, and without anchoring that forward reference to a clear/precise time ("little did he know that a decade later he'd wear brown pants again."). I guess it's a [Markoff Chain] of thought.

Update: fresh links from elsewhere:

• [Tom Foremski] has an description a Markoff book-pimping event at Xerox Parc which turned into an Engelbart love-fest, plus an interview with Engelbart himself.

• Ross Mayfield has related commentary.

Aug'2005 - Doc Searls on the [East Coast] influences.

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