This Friday, I thought I’d highlight one of my favorite and nerdiest documentaries of the technology industry. Given the presence of the late Steve Jobs in the media lately – his loss to cancer, the new Walter Issaccon biography, and Apple’s re-creation of personal computing – I thought it would be nice to reflect upon Jobs’ first major impact into our technological lives.
15 years ago, PBS created a documentary called Triumph of the Nerds: An Irreverent History of the PC Industry. It was hosted by Bob Cringely, who at the time wrote a column for InfoWorld about the goings-on of Silicon Valley and now writes a weekely column, I, Cringely. In it, Cringely humorously and effectively describes how Steve Jobs and Bill Gates created the PC industry as we know it.
I was always impressed with this documentary and the impact the subjects (especially Jobs) had on our lives through their business and technology pursuits. I personally think it’s amazing and worth your time watching. They made another documentary about the history of the Internet: Nerds 2.0.1 - this second documentary was done in 1998 and the Internet as we know it was probably only three years old or so…
