PBS: Triumph of the Nerds

I unfortunately frittered away the morning watching all three episodes, not knowing that it only went up the mid-90's. I'd like to see Cringley do another one for a commentary in the last 10 years. <p>It's funny how things have changed. Towards the end when they were talking about the uncertain future, as a viewer I felt like someone from the future that traveled back in time. They talked about, what's the next company to dominate? I wanted to say "Google!" at the screen. <p>One thing that I was kind of surprised about was that both microsoft and apple were both seen as "the little guy" against the big IBM. Only apple, however, seemed to mature its image to the "hip revolutionary" whereas Microsoft grew to be viewed as "borgish"<p>I see the same type of attitude change for Google in the last year. Often called "industry darling" last year, Google started getting bits and pieces of flack. You can't please everyone, naturally, but the whimper has intensified, especially after PG's "MS is dead" article, which put Google in everyone's sights. It's easier to collectively hate the big guy. <p>On a separate note, it would seem from microsoft's actions of winning the browser wars and letting IE languish, etc. that they really just didn't get and missed out on the boat with search and the internet. Surprisingly, Bill was on guard the whole time. He was paranoid about the Next Big Thing, and surrounded himself with a ton of smart people and always looking to dip into different markets. And still, with that kind of vigilance, search engines slipped through. <p>So in a way, that's a bit reassuring (for us at hacker news), that in our fast paced technological push, there's always room to create new markets within a single lifetime. And PG's probably right that big companies have more to fear from us the unknowns rather than other big companies--and it's not just because he's enamored with startups.

Thank the lord someone uploaded this. I've been looking for this PBS documentary for quite some time. Still looking for the sequel though: "Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet."