"What the Dormouse Said"

In this talk, John Markoff, Technology writer for the New York Times, highlights how 60's counterculture in the Bay Area shaped the personal computer industry.

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.

John Markoff is a senior writer for the New York Times, and co-author of Cyberpunk: Outlaws and hackers on the Computer Frontier and the best selling Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick, America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw. He is a three-time Pulizer Prize nominee.

Markoff's talk will be followed by a panel discussion including Markoff and four of the key figures whose work Markoff has chronicled:

Dennis Allison was co-founder of the Peoples Computer company, created Tiny Basic, and was a founder of Dr. Dobbs Journal. He is currently a lecturer in the Computer Systems Laboratory at Stanford and works as an independent consultant.

Bill Duvall worked in Doug Englebart's Augment group at the Stanford Research Institute, where he wrote the software that sent the first ARPANet message, and subseqeuntly moved to Xerox PARC.

Lee Felsenstein ran the Homebrew Computer Club, and designed the Sol and Osborne 1, two of the original personal computers. He is currently a partner at the Fonly Institute, a consulting and research organization focused on developing groundbreaking products that place computer power in the hands of ordinary people.

Larry Tesler worked at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) and later Xerox PARC and Apple, where he was Vice-President and Chief Scientist. He is currently Vice-President and Research Fellow at Yahoo, where he heads their User Experience and Design Group.