Accidental Empires
Encyclopedia
Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date (1992, 1996), is a book written by Mark Stephens under the pen name Robert X. Cringely
about the founding of the personal computer industry and the history of Silicon Valley
. The style of the book is informal, and in the first chapter Cringley claims that he is not a historian but an explainer, and that "historians have a harder job because they can be faulted for what is left out; explainers like me can get away with printing only the juicy parts."
The book was revised and republished in 1996, with new material added. A documentary
based on the book, called Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires
was produced by PBS in 1996, with Cringely as the presenter.
The book was on the set-book list for the Open University
course T171 You, Your Computer and the Net.
Robert X. Cringely
Robert X. Cringely is the pen name of both technology journalist Mark Stephens and a string of writers for a column in InfoWorld, the one-time weekly computer trade newspaper published by IDG.- Biography :...
about the founding of the personal computer industry and the history of Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
. The style of the book is informal, and in the first chapter Cringley claims that he is not a historian but an explainer, and that "historians have a harder job because they can be faulted for what is left out; explainers like me can get away with printing only the juicy parts."
The book was revised and republished in 1996, with new material added. A documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
based on the book, called Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires
Triumph of the Nerds
Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires is a documentary film written and hosted by Robert X. Cringely and produced for British television by Oregon Public Broadcasting. The title refers to the 1984 film, Revenge of the Nerds, and the documentary itself is based on Cringely's book...
was produced by PBS in 1996, with Cringely as the presenter.
The book was on the set-book list for the Open University
Open University
The Open University is a distance learning and research university founded by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom...
course T171 You, Your Computer and the Net.
Release details
- 1991, United States of America, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc ISBN 0-441-00652-3, Pub date February 1992 Hardback
- 1993, United States of America, Harper Collins ISBN 0-88730-621-7, Pub date February 1993, Paperback
- 1996, United States of America, Harper Collins ISBN 0-88730-855-4, Pub date October 23, 1996, Hardback
- 1996, United States of America, Penguin Books Ltd ISBN 0-14-025826-4, Pub date April 4, 1996, Paperback
External links
- Accidental Empires - at Google BooksGoogle Book SearchGoogle Books is a service from Google that searches the full text of books that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition, and stored in its digital database. The service was formerly known as Google Print when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October...