Over to Channel 4 for the second part of Robert Cringely’s documentary about the birth of the Internet, Glory of the Geeks – Serving The Suits. He visits Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet, at his pig farm. Metcalfe was working at Xerox PARC where he developed the first version of Ethernet – up to 256 computers all connected on one long piece of coaxial cable. When Xerox did exploit the technology enough, Metcalfe started his own company to build Ethernet interfaces for PCs, called 3Com.
The next big player in networking was Sun Microsystems, first with founder Andy Bechtolsheim.
Vinod Khosla persuaded Bechtolsheim to form the company with him.
The third founder is Scott McNealy.
Completing the core team as Bill Joy, software specialist, who would allegedly rewrite a whole Unix operating system over the weekend [citation needed]. He also, notoriously, created the vi text editor.
The next step in the story was at Novell, a company that was rescued from failure because of a project that had only just been started – Netware, another way of networking PCs with file servers.
Enter Microsoft, and there’s a section talking about Microsoft’s rather disastrous attempts to enter the networking business in the late 80s – OS/2 LanManager anyone?
Bob talks to Stewart Brand, founder of online community The Well (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link). Which owed its success to, believe it or not, a large community of Grateful Dead fans. To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever knowingly listened to a Grateful Dead song. For such a famous band, you’d think I’d know at least their ‘big hit’. I probably do know one, but not that it’s from the Grateful Dead.
Sandy Lerner is a co-founder of Cisco systems. Cisco’s killer product was the network router, which allowed different, separate networks to talk to each other.
She founded it with her husband Len Bosack, who talks about how working 100 hours a week is ‘a start’ and comes off as a psycho. Len and Sandy are no longer married.
The story of Cisco, and the way Venture Capitalist Don Valentine treated the founders, is rather unpleasant.
Here’s a version of this show – this is the American version, with the title Nerds 2.0.1.
The last episode in the series takes the Internet into the 90s, with Wiring The World. The first major innovations was the World Wide Web, created at CERN by Tim Berners-Lee.
The 90s Web was a whole aesthetic, wasn’t it?
TBL wasn’t the first one to have the idea of using hypertext on the internet – that was Ted Nelson, with his ‘Xanadu’ concept, but that never made it beyond theory.
Marc Andreessen developed Mosaic, a web browser, which became Netscape.
Jim Clark took the Mosaic browser, and Andreessen, and created Netscape as a company.
Steve Ballmer does his usual bullshit about why the first browser offering from Microsoft wasn’t that great, basically blaming the company’s focus on shipping Windows 95. I don’t have a lot of time for Ballmer.
Bob talks to the founder of Excite, one of the early search engines.
He also talks to the founders of The Motley Fool, an online money advice site. They do insist on wearing the stupid hats.
Larry Ellison tells us what type of underwear he likes (Munsingwear, apparently, a fact that I retain in my head to this day, and which is probably preventing my brain from achieving its true potential. Curse you, Ellison!)
Jeff Bezos, from the early days at Amazon when it just sold books, and it never made a profit, and he still had some hair.
Bob talks to some of the people who moved from India to Silicon Valley to work in the industry.
James Gosling created Java, at the time the ‘network’ programming language. Remember when Java used to run in the browser?
Microsoft finally take notice of the web, after Bill Gates writes his famous company memo, ‘The Internet Tidal Wave’, and refocuses the company on making the internet central to every other part of the company.
Because they were seen to be giving the browser away for free, the US Department of Justice launched an anti-trust case against them.
Here’s this episode in American form.
After this, recording switches, and there’s the end of a documentary, Lloyd George’s War.
There’s a trailer for Cold War. Plus a trailer for BBC Choice featuring Pauline Quirke and some daleks.
Then, a new series of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads starts with Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet, starring the great Patricia Routledge. This is, as usual, funny and sad.
BBC Genome: BBC Two – 6th October 1998 – 21:50
After this the recording switches back to Channel 4 for The One Where Johnny Makes Friends. Johnny Vaughan has a day on the set of Friends when it’s shooting in London, and pretends that the security keep throwing him out. I don’t have a lot of time for Johnny Vaughan, I have to admit.
It’s not even that interesting, with not much that wouldn’t have been produced with a bunch of junket interviews. Although we do get a BTS shot of Joey and Fergie.
And some rehearsal shots.
Some cast hijinks, as Matt Le Blanc interrupts Matthew Perry’s interview to fix his makeup.
The only interesting part of it (in hindsight) is Vaughan telling Courteney Cox that he always thought Monica and Chandler would get together – which happens in the London episodes, so Vaughan wouldn’t have known.
I did like the moment when he gave David Schwimmer a book of Pam Ayres poetry, and Schwimmer read part of one an found it very funny.
After this, there’s the start of an episode of Ally McBeal, in which the firm are representing a foot fetishist who broke into a woman’s apartment to touch her feet. I mean, is this whole show about creeps?
The tape ends shortly into the episode.
Adverts:
- trail: Portillo’s Progress
- VW Passat
- Norwich Union
- Hoover
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- trail: The 11 O’Clock Show
- B&Q
- Air Canada
- The Equitable Life – Buzz Aldrin
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- B&Q
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- trail: Wild Tales
- Renault Scenic
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- HMV
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- trail: Forget Paris
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- trail: Sex Bomb
- Film Four
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- trail: The Big Breakfast
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VHiStory 