Digital_nation is an eye opening documentary from PBS which explores how the Web and digital media are changing the way we think, work, learn, wage war and interact. The film examines the major differences between the Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives who are growing up digital.

A digital native is a person for whom digital technologies already existed when they were born, and hence has grown up with digital technology such as computers, the Internet, mobile phones and MP3 players.

A digital immigrant is an individual who grew up without digital technology and adopted it later.

This is a must watch documentary for anyone with an interest in the digital world we all inhabit.

Following on from Episode 1 & Episode 2 – Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires continues: “Great Artists Steal” Episode Outline:

• Steve Jobs, having viewed a demonstration of Xerox’s Star graphical user interface, developed a desktop manager for the Macintosh with an icon-based interface modeled on the Star. Cringely suggested that Xerox had the potential to be one of the key companies in the up and coming PC industry, had they managed to protect the intellectual property rights of Star GUI.

• Apple agreed to license parts of the Mac OS GUI to Microsoft who went on to develop Windows. Upon the release of Windows 2.0, Apple sued Microsoft in 1988 over the “look and feel” of the Mac OS. Apple lost the lawsuit in 1994, leaving Microsoft dominant in the operating system business.

• Steve Jobs had recruited Pepsi-Cola executive John Sculley to become CEO of Apple, saying to the latter “do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world?”

• The Apple Macintosh pioneered many of the features now standard in the PC, particularly ease of use. However, the Macintosh was considerable more expensive, so it was rapidly overtaken by the IBM PC, with some pundits not only saying that IBM had won, but also that Apple could potentially go out of business.

• Chris Espinosa described Sculley’s ouster of Jobs saying “The grandiose plans of what Macintosh were going to be was just so far out of whack with the truth of what the product was doing and the truth of what the product was doing was not horrible it was salvageable but the gap between the two was just so unthinkable that somebody had to do something and that somebody was John Sculley”.

Following on from Episode 1, – Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires continues:
“Riding The Bear” Episode Outline:

• Compaq’s successful reverse-engineering of the IBM PC, which led to many competitors producing IBM-clones that undercut IBM’s own offering. While IBM was one of the key companies that fostered the growth of the PC industry and initially dominated it, by 1990 it had lost its lead.

• IBM’s unsuccessful attempt to recapture a dominate share in the PC market with the PS/2 and OS/2, the latter being the successor to MS-DOS. The proprietary nature of the PS/2 and exclusivity of OS/2 was intended to drive sales of IBM’s own hardware and made it difficult for other manufacturers of PC compatibles to compete.

• Microsoft had originally profited from the initial success of the IBM PC. It did even better with the proliferation of clones as IBM’s own market share shrunk, so Microsoft saw no business sense in following IBM’s lead. Microsoft saw more potential in developing Windows, a project they pursued parallel to their cooperating with IBM on OS/2, and Windows 3.0 proved to be a great success (along with MS-DOS) bundled with new PCs. This led to the split between the two titans, with Microsoft setting the standard for PCs, while IBM concentrated on its mainframe and services businesses.

These days everywhere we look there is a huge amount of buzz about “The Digital Revolution”. We ourselves recognise daily the impact that cutting edge technology plays in our lives. The following tag cloud has many of the terms we associate with the Digital Revolution…

Technology has changed the way we live our lives, communicate, work, shop, educate, in fact there has been such a shift that we barely remember what life was like before the Internet.

We recognise that the digital revolution started way before Web2.0 and even the invention of the Internet. But yet we are all talking about this revolution as if it is a recent phenomena. Just stop for a moment and think about the history of the life changing technology we have at our fingertips today. The invention of the home computer, the Internet and the Visionaries/Founding Fathers of the TRUE Digital Revolution. Their dream envisioned a personal computer on every desk in every home… Wow, with the world more and more becoming a global village, we are pretty much there and beyond. Where will it take us next?

SO, in homage to the “nerds” the next few blog posts tell their story via the 3 part documentary series, Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996) which tells the important role they play in our history. The documentary film was written and hosted by Robert X. Cringely and produced for British television by Oregon Public Broadcasting.

The documentary itself is based on Cringely’s book Accidental Empires. The documentary chronicles the rise of the personal computer/home computer beginning in the 1970s with the Altair 8800, Apple I and Apple II and VisiCalc. It continues through the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh revolution through the 1980s and the mid 1990s, ending at the beginning of the Dot-com boom with the release of Windows 95.

The documentary cites the several major milestones in the PC industry: It includes interviews with many influential figures in the PC industry, including Apple’s Steve Jobs, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, and Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

Watch the first episode below. “Impressing Their Friends” Follows the story of the pure genius techies (Nerds) who could get excited about a box with flashing lights, flicking switches and binary code. Through to the development of the first mass produced personal computer which the non techies could get excited about.

Enjoy!