John Markoff Speaks

New York Times John Markoff will be speaking at the last SD Forum meeting of the season before summer hits next Wednesday evening, June 6th at PARC in Palo Alto.

John's new book What the Dormouse Said: "How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry" will be a highlight and Borders Borders Books will host a book signing for both John Markoff and Dan Gillmor during the networking reception prior to the event.

In this talk highlighting themes from his new book, Markoff tells the story of the how military funding of basic research, anti-war activism, and readily available psychedelic drugs converged on the mid-Peninsula in the 1960's to create a unique political and cultural environment that led to development of the personal computer.

Markoff's talk will be followed by a panel discussion including Markoff and four of the key figures whose work Markoff has chronicled, including co-founder of the Peoples Computer company and Dr. Dobbs Journal Dennis Allison, Bill Duvall, who worked in Doug Englebart's Augment group at the Stanford Research Institute, Lee Felsenstein, who ran the Homebrew Computer Club, and designed the Sol and Osborne 1, two of the original personal computers, and lastly Larry Tesler, who worked at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) and later Xerox PARC and Apple, where he was Vice-President and Chief Scientist.