Geeks Bearing Gifts

Book excerpt: THE PERFECT GIFT - Whether you love the computer world the way it is, or consider it a nightmare honkytonk prison, you'll giggle and rage at Ted Nelson's telling of computer history, its personalities and infights. Computer movies, music, 3D; the eternal fight between Jobs and Gates; the tangled stories of the Internet and the World Wide Web; all these and more are punchily told in brief chapters on many topics such as The Web Browser Salad, Voting Machines, Google, Web 2.0 and much more. These short stories make great reading - it's a book to dip in and out of. You'll find answers to such questions as # Why do alphabets have upper case, why not numbers? # Why does everything have to be hierarchical on computers? That's not how *my* projects are organized! Where did WYSIWYG come from? The answer will surprise you. Plus, you'll find out why the author, a well-known computer veteran, hopes it can all become much better.