Geeks Bearing Gifts

Let me say up front that Ted Nelson has been one of the most original thinkers in the field of computing over the past fifty years, and I respect his attempts to articulate his vision even though he has never been able to put it into practice. I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy of Literary Machines or Computer Lib/Dream Machines. It's a shame that these books are out of print.

Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this book. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's embarrassingly bad. If you had told me that it was put together by a high school student who pasted together scraps from Wikipedia, I'd have believed you. It's not just badly written; it's sloppy.

It's true that some of Nelson's unique perspective colors his account show more of computing history, but I doubt that the reader unfamiliar with his other work would come away with much of an understanding of why some of us find his ideas exciting. Meanwhile, as history, Geeks Bearing Gifts is virtually useless.

I wish that Nelson had put his energy into a first-hand account of his experiences instead of this shoddy attempt to (re)write history. That would have been an original contribution and probably also quite entertaining. Geeks Bearing Gifts is neither. show less