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Ask HN: Recommendations on books and documentaries on tech companies/people?

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Ask HN: Recommendations on books and documentaries on tech companies/people?

#1
There exist lots of material about trending companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Apple and the people behind them such as Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, etc...

But what about companies such as Sun Microsystems, Netscape, Intel, Red Hat...and people involved in tech such as Tim Berners-Lee, Marissa Mayer, Brian Kernighan...?

For instance, I read the "iWoz" book by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, and loved it because he describes lots of technical challenges he faced, as well as what problems had Apple back at the time. Lots of fun facts, anecdotes and info, mainly from a technical perspective.

Another nice book was "Just For Fun", by Linus Torvalds. It provided a human perspective on Linus, who is usually depicted as a tyrant. In addition he describes the initial development of the Linux Kernel as well as the whys behind it, a nice introspection for those who are into programming.

Those are the kinds stories I'd like to read, material about tech companies: how they got created, what struggles did they have to face, the people that founded them and developed them.

Do you have any recommendations in the form of books, documentaries, blog posts or other sorts of material?

Thank in advance!

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations on books and documentaries on tech companies/people?

#2
I'm currently in the process of reading "Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age,"[0] and I highly recommend it. I've always viewed Xerox as primarily an office printer company, and the fact that they innovated/invented many of the systems that we still use today (ethernet, layered windows on an operating system, the mouse, bitmap displays) and then failed to market these technologies, makes for a really interesting read.

[0] - https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer...

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations on books and documentaries on tech companies/people?

#4
'The Dream Machine: J. C. R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal' by M. Mitchell Waldrop was an amazing historical vertical slice from the beginnings of computation, through various military industrial escapades, through the ultimate demo to finally to Xeroc Parc.

It answers the question "where did the personal computer come from" and the answer is not some garage in silicon valley, but is far more interesting and complex.

Re: Ask HN: Recommendations on books and documentaries on tech companies/people?

#10
And while we're on the topic, are there any books written about this by people from a background in the humanities, like sociology or anthropology or history? It'd be interesting to read a take on our world from the perspective of someone with a different, yet nonetheless no less powerful and insightful, conceptual toolkit.
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