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First in a series.<\/strong> February, 2013 —\u00a0We stand today near the beginning of the post-PC era. Tablets and smart phones are replacing desktops and notebooks. Clouds are replacing clusters. We\u2019re more dependent than ever on big computer rooms only this time we not only don\u2019t own them, we don\u2019t even know where they are.\u00a0 Three years from now we\u2019ll barely recognize the computing landscape that was built on personal computers. So if we\u2019re going to keep an accurate chronicle of that era, we\u2019d better get to work right now, before we forget how it really happened.<\/p>\n Oddly enough, I predicted all of this almost 25 years ago as you\u2019ll see if you choose to share this journey and read on. But it almost didn\u2019t happen. In fact I wish it had never happened at all\u2026<\/p>\n The story of\u00a0Accidental Empires<\/em>\u00a0began in the spring of 1989. I was in New York covering a computer trade show called PC Expo (now long gone) for InfoWorld, my employer at the time. I was at the Marriott Marquis hotel, the phone rang and it was my wife telling me that she had just been fired from her Silicon Valley marketing job. She had never been fired before and was devastated.\u00a0 I, on the other hand, had been fired from every job I ever held so professional oblivion seemed a part of the package. But she was crushed. Crushed and in denial. They\u2019d given her two months to find another job inside the company.<\/p>\n “They don\u2019t mean it”, I said. “That\u2019s two month severance. There is no job. Look outside the company”.<\/p>\n But she wouldn\u2019t listen to me. There had to be a mistake. For two months she interviewed for every open position but there were no offers. Of course there weren\u2019t. Two months to the day later she was home for good. And a week after that learned she had breast cancer.<\/p>\n Facing a year or more of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation that would keep my wife from working for at least that long, I had to find a way to make up the income (she made twice what I did at the time). What\u2019s a hack writer to do?<\/p>\n Write a book, of course.<\/p>\n If my wife hadn\u2019t been fired and hadn\u2019t become ill,\u00a0Accidental Empires<\/em>\u00a0would never have happened. As it was, I was the right guy in the right place at the right time and so what I was able to create in the months that followed was something quite new — an insider view of the personal computer industry written by a guy who was fired from every job he ever held, a guy with no expectation of longevity, no inner censor, nothing to lose and no reason not to tell the truth.<\/p>\n And so it was a sensation, especially in places like Japan where you just don\u2019t write that Bill Gates needed to take more showers (he was pretty ripe most of the time).<\/p>\n Microsoft tried to keep the book from being published at all. They got a copy of the galleys (from the Wall Street Journal, I was told) and threatened the publisher, Addison-Wesley, with being cut off from publishing books about upcoming Microsoft products. This was a huge threat at the time and it was to Addison-Wesley\u2019s credit that they stood by the book.<\/p>\n Bullies tend to be cowards at heart so I told the publisher that Microsoft wouldn\u2019t follow-through and they didn\u2019t. This presaged Redmond\u2019s “we only threatened and never really intended to do it” antitrust defense.<\/p>\n The book was eventually published in 18 languages. “For Pammy, who knows we need the money” read the dedication that for some reason nobody ever questioned. The German edition, which was particularly bad, having been split between two different translators with a decided shift in tone in the middle, read “F\u00fcr Pammy, wei\u00df, wer ich f\u00fcr Geld zu schreiben”.<\/p>\n “For Pammy, who knows I write for money”.<\/p>\n Doesn\u2019t have the same ring, does it?<\/p>\n The book only happened because my boss at\u00a0InfoWorld<\/em>, the amazing Jonathan Sacks (who later ran AOL), fought for me. It happened because\u00a0InfoWorld<\/em>\u00a0publisher Eric Hippeau signed the contract almost on his way out to door to becoming publisher at arch-rival\u00a0PC Magazine<\/i>.<\/p>\n Maybe the book was Hippeau\u2019s joke on his old employer, but it made my career and I haven\u2019t had a vacation since as a result. That\u2019s almost 24 years with no more than three days off, which probably in itself explains much of my behavior.<\/p>\n Accidental Empires<\/em>\u00a0is very important to me and I don\u2019t serialize it here lightly. My point is to update it and I trust that my readers of many years will help me do that.<\/p>\n Join me for the next two months as we relive the early history of the personal computer industry. If you remember the events described here, share your memories. If I made a mistake, correct me. If there\u2019s something I missed (Commodore, Atari, etc.) then throw it in and explain its importance. I\u2019ll be be with you every step, commenting and responding in turn, and together we\u2019ll improve the book, making it into something even more special.<\/p>\n And what became of Pammy? She\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n Change is the only constant in this — or any other — story.<\/p>\n Reprinted with permission<\/i><\/p>\n Photo Credit:<\/strong>\u00a0urfin<\/a>\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/p>\n First in a series. February, 2013 —\u00a0We stand today near the beginning of the post-PC era. Tablets and smart phones are replacing desktops and notebooks. Clouds are replacing clusters. We\u2019re more dependent than ever on big computer rooms only this time we not only don\u2019t own them, we don\u2019t even know where they are.\u00a0 Three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7434,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-641537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7434"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n<\/img><\/a>
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