Francis Pisani is the Bay Area based technology columnist-blogger for El País (Madrid), Le Monde (Paris) and Reforma (Mexico). His articles have been published by more than one hundred publications, in Europe, Latin Ameria, the U.S. and Asia. He has recently contributed to several collective works about online journalism and networks. He lectures at UC-Berkeley, and has lectured at Stanford University as well as at the Universidad IberoAmericana in Mexico City. He is currently coordinating a Ford Foundation funded research project on Transnational Communities and Networks in the Hurricane Basin.
More can be found at francispisani.net and at transnets.net
When I arrived from Mexico and war-torn Central America to cover Silicon Valley I was impressed, and more than slightly skeptical, to find millionaires with some kind of social bent. Money, of course, matters more than revolution around here, but it is not always the whole picture. This is not easy to understand for a foreigner (and much less to explain as a correspondent is supposed to do).
That is perhaps why I enjoyed so much reading John Markoffs What the Dormouse Said, How the 60s counterculture shaped the Personal Computer Industry (Viking).
An easy read, the book traces small and meaningful moments in the life of some of the key actors of the PC revolution. This includes Stewart Brands first LSD trip as well as Doug Englebart Brooks Hall Auditorium conference on December 9th 1968. In many wasy it is still the most remarkable computer-technology demonstration of all time writes Markoff.
What the Dormouse Said weaves the networks of interactions between peace activists who wanted to change the world through protest, hippies who sought to augment the human mind through LSD, and engineers who desired to improve human capabilities through technology.
It sheds a fascinating light on at least two of the key confrontations that matter so much today:
Markoffs book gives historic legitimacy to those of us who advocate a more democratic and open use of information technology.
Francis Pisani
