What the Dickens? Accidental Empires Rebooted

Today is the 200th birthday of author Charles Dickens, yet also an oddly appropriate moment to announce a new edition of my book Accidental Empires in a very 21st century format.

Late last year a reader pointed out to me that 2012 is the 20th anniversary of Accidental Empires which was, in its own way, a pretty influential book. Accidental Empires was my attempt to blatantly apply the breezy style of Adam Smith’s The Money Game to the personal computer industry. And somehow it worked, because the book was eventually published in 18 languages and was a bestseller in several countries including the U.S. and Japan.

The book was also the basis for my 1996 TV miniseries […]

By |February 7th, 2012|2012|115 Comments
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When Engineers Lie

Twenty years ago, when I was writing Accidental Empires, my book about the PC industry, I included near the beginning a little rant about how good engineers were incapable of lying, because their work relied on Terminal A being positive and not negative and if they lied about such things then nothing would ever work. That was before I learned much about data security, where apparently lying is part of the game. Well, based on recent events at RSA, Lockheed Martin, and other places, I think lying should not be part of the game.

Was there a break-in? Was data stolen? Was there an unencrypted database of SecureID seeds and serial numbers? All we […]

By |June 9th, 2011|2011|100 Comments
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