Kyle Harrison
to-read
Geeks Bearing Gifts
Geeks Bearing Gifts: How the Computer World Got This Way
- Author
- Ted Nelson
- Published
- 2009
- Pages
- 199
- Recommended
- Once
Why it’s on the list: Nelson’s idiosyncratic counter-history of computing — the argument that today’s conventions are frozen accidents of who happened to be in which room, not the outcome of anything like design. A hostile witness to the received Xerox/ARPA story.
Where I heard about it
- The replies to Sarah Guo — named in answer to her question on X (March 2025): “is there a book / essay about environments that best support scientific discovery? Not about specifically bell labs, cavendish, xerox parc, los alamos - but why these places were so productive?” The full list of replies is on Is There a Book… (tweet).
About this edition
Named in the thread as “Nerds Bearing Gifts by Ted Nelson”; the book is Geeks Bearing Gifts.
Connections
- Ted Nelson — author, and the originator of hypertext.
- Xerox PARC · DARPA — the institutions whose received history the book disputes.
- Open Source Knowledge — the portfolio idea.