The PC is probably one of the single important things in our society, at lot of our daily activities circle around the PC and its functions. It is therefore somewhat interesting to watch a documentary like Triumph of the Nerds (TotN) to see how the development went. However, there is one thing that strikes you the minute you start watching it. This is its age. Being done in 1996 it makes the series 11 years old.
It can be said that some documentaries age well, you could probably pick up an old National Geographic documentary about nature or history and still get a feel of relevancy. However, with TotN you really cannot. While it does a good work of informing you of the early history of the PC, by the second episode it starts to show its age quite severely and by the third episode it is more or less screaming to you that it is old with its outdated conclusions and opinions. Why is that? The main reason is that the field of computing and the development of the PC have gone forward in an insane pace that I honestly doubt can be really contested by any technological field in terms of development with exception of the cellphone probably. To show how quickly the development has gone take a look at the following picture (Link provided below). To the left is an IBM 1 gigabyte Harddrive. To the left is a modern memorycard with 1 gigabyte of space. It took roughly 20 years for that to happen.
We have gone from simple single processor machines like the Apple 2 that lacked modern graphical user interface to dual core processing computers that are capable of producing some of the best graphics we've seen so far and there no signs of the development slowing down either. And that's the main problem with TotN; its age is showing way too clearly for someone in the 21st century. While it may be a good picture of the early days with the Altair and Apple 2, it is not a satisfactory view on the later developments since it more or less stops at the birth of the internet and the release of Windows 95.
Even the comment of Apples future as a declining company is now just laughable. Two years later, they release the first iMac and where more or less back on the star list again. And let's not forget the iPod, which is probably one of the main contributors to Apple being able to regain a foothold in the industry, and in turn more or less started the mp3-player revolution and the uprising of being able to buy music over the internet legally. This is also a problem with TotN, being made just in the early throes of the internet it doesn't really give an adequate picture of its entry into our society and the changes it have brought.
Other commentary made throughout especially the last episode also shows its age. For example, the leader of Oracle spoke about the PC going the way of the well and the bucket. I myself found that comment extremely laughable, because if that was the case, then what am I currently typing this on? A typewriter?
Which in turn makes me wonder, what happened to Oracle? Granted, at that time those comments might seem valid because no one really had any idea what was going to happen with the PC industry in the future other than what they saw what was happening at the time. I don't think Bill Gates himself would really imagine himself in his position today back then, and neither Steve Jobs would imagine him going back to Apple and be able to push it back up for its rut back then. But now we can look back a bit and see what has happened with the industry and how much it has changed.
However, at the same time it hasn't changed all that much. The basic nerd culture hasn't really changed all that much since the entry of the PC into our society. Still there are people living on too much Coke and pizza leftovers while they play games or trying to code something. Despite some of them becoming corporate suits for their own companies or others. Still that image remains and is still actively going on within the nerd culture. For why change something that has worked before?
Sure, the whole corporate of nerds' thing has vanished to some extent with a few exceptions to go back to a semi classic business model of offices and some order into it all. Sure there companies that go with a laid-back style, but they aren't as common these days or as visible like the early ones were. I would think that the burst of the cyber bubble during the 1990's has pushed some sense into people and those who made it through reorganized and became a little more efficient rather than a bit flaunty or boisterous. One good example of this was the game developers Ion Storms Dallas office, which was placed on the 54th floor in the JPMorgan Chase Tower in central Dallas and with the company logo on the floor made in Italian marble. They had too much of a focus on the image rather the product and only managed to produce one game before the office was closed down. Nowadays it seems that the image of a more relaxed company has returned somewhat, for example Google are known for having a sort of laid back relaxed office style and also having the "Twenty percent" time rule, which encourages workers to spend at least a day a week on projects that interests them. This rule has been the reason for the creation of ideas like Gmail and Google News among others. And has tried to become as non-corporate and stay out of the hierarchy model that usually permeates other companies today.
The rise of the personal computer has helped our society quite a lot by allowing us to quickly exchange views and ideas over media such as internet discussion boards or emails. But there is an inherent danger with this too. And that is the lack of the messages existence, a conversation on the internet via email or discussion board is forever lost if it's deleted, and the risk of this is that we barely leave anything behind as an image of our culture. Even things such as DVDs are known for having limited a lifespan before breaking down and not working. Especially if mistreated their lifespan shortens even more. The risk of this is that there won't be any historical remains of our culture as there has been with other cultures, which despite their age have left documents to show us a decent image of how it looked back then. But now with our increased culture of consumption there might be a risk of our society being a blank spot on the history chart if the unthinkable should happen to us.
While there are certain things that will probably be saved, such as news archives and such, it will probably not give a complete picture for future historians to puzzle together an image of how we lived. Worse if they suddenly base our society around the wrong material such as reality TV. This in turn would be rather amusing somewhat, but also a bit frightening because it would show us in the completely wrong light. So by now you are probably asking, "What should I do to prevent this? And can I really do something?"
In all honesty you probably really can't. Because saving every email you got by printing them out and stashing them somewhere could be a good idea. But with the multitude of emails that people tend to get this would end up as a waste of resources and in the end not really worth it.
So what else can you do really to try to give a good image of your daily life? You could strive to backup all the photographs and videos you've done onto several different Medias. And then remember to stash them in a good way so that they don't deteriorate so fast. That way you have something to give to future historians that ponder about what happened to our society. If the unthinkable should happen that is.
But for now you can worry about the massive amounts of spam that continues to plague your email account despite your attempts to filter it away. Or if your friend has really seen the latest message you posted on his MySpace account, or you really should blog about that annoying teacher in school. Remember though that you are doing this with a machine that started as something simple made by a few geeky guys in a garage and is now a multimillion industry, with many of the same garage geeks in high positions earning millions if not billions every day.
It is truly the Triumph of the Nerds isn't it? ;)