Adam Fisher (1)

As a Steve Jobs fan and as a person fascinated about Silicon Valley, this book was a fantastic gold mine of stories and trivia. So many interesting characters, telling the stories of companies and many of my favourite products.

The book is an oral history, which means the entire book is fully made of the quotes from these people. The author is just an editor and compiler of the quotes. This is an interesting format for me.

Highly recommend it for people interested interested in the history of tech companies, Silicon Valley or if you are a fan of Steve Jobs.… (mais)

This is an interesting book, with a novel presentation - each chapter is almost entirely direct quotes from interviews, both from other sources and that the author conducted. It includes many of the prime players in the computer industry in Silicon Valley, starting in the 1960's and proceeding to the late 2000's.

The quotes are arranged in a conversational mode, where a quote is made, and then someone else "responds" to the quote. I bookmarked the back section, which has an alphabetical (by last name) listing of almost all the sources that are used, with a short write-up of their contributions. I flipped back to this section often throughout the reading. There is also a picture section, which helped me to root to several of the main players.

The author described their process for creating the quote structure as overwhelmingly manual - laying them out in storybook form on walls, etc. This alone makes the book very interesting. Combine that with a collection of thoughts, ideas, interjection, and intrigue, and we see the development of companies and technology.

My biggest complaint is that I often just found myself getting into the story of a company, and the chapter would end, often with another subject being addressed in the next chapter.

I was surprised to find several players that were involved in different companies (such as Sean Parker with Napster and Facebook, one that I was actually aware of before I read the book).

Many of the events described were central to my life (as I suppose it is for almost everyone of my generation and also many of the younger generations), such as the development of Atari, Apple, Netscape, Google, eBay, Facebook, and Twitter.

There is a very sympathetic tone for Steve Jobs, with conversely a commentary on Bill Gates (when he comes up, as he only tangentially touches Silicon Valley directly, being in New Mexico and Redmond). There is an almost sickly sweet memorize of Steve Jobs in the second to last chapter, with a couple of people giving some counter point that is presented much like sour grapes.

The last chapter is a visionary chapter, discussing many possible and potential technological advances in the coming years, including self driving cars, AI, and fusion power. I found this chapter interesting to read.

Overall, an intriguing historical tome. I am not quite sure how much business application it has (for generating ideas and self improvement). In fact, there is a decent amount of content that casually glorifies drug use.… (mais)

I've never read a non-fiction book like this one. It is mostly dialogue that has been spliced together from tech interviews with over 200 experts who worked in and reported on the rise of Silicon Valley as it became one of the greatest tech centers in the world. At first I had my doubts about whether the author's idea to cut-and-paste words would work; obviously, one would have to be very careful not to quote people out of context. Also, done poorly, the end result could be very dull. But to Fisher's credit I think he succeeds. I really enjoyed it, and I learned some things along the way. (By the way, the "Uncensored" in the title probably refers to the many F-bombs dropped by these intrepid wizards of tech.)

There's something about dialogue that causes it to reach a deeper level within me than mere didactic prose. How 'bout you? And by deeper I mean, in this case, it imparts the feeling that you understand more of what is going on than you would if the stories related in this book were just narratives related in third person by a single author. So much of what makes Silicon Valley interesting to insiders and outsiders alike is how its entrepreneurial promise attracted, and still attracts, a very idealistic type of personality. When one hears these stories, told by its primary actors, in their own words, it allows a subjective function to happen inside the reader. One begins to make correlations and assemble a parallax view that is somehow richer than a straightforward narrative told from only one point of view.

Overall, the book is arranged chronologically beginning from Englebart's concept of a human-friendly computer interface back in the 1950s up to the present time of Facebook and Twitter. Miller does an exceptional job of introducing a theme at the beginning of each chapter - there are approximately 30 chapters - and then arranging the dialogue to stay on point. I found his treatment compelling and, for me, it was a fast read.… (mais)