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When Computing Got Personal
- A History of the Desktop Computer
- Narrated by: Norman Gilligan
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
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Publisher's summary
This is the story of how a handful of geeks and mavericks dragged the computer out of corporate back rooms and laboratories and into our living rooms and offices. It is a tale not only of extraordinary innovation and vision but also of cunning business deals, boardroom tantrums and acrimonious lawsuits.
Here you will find some of the most intelligent and eccentric people you could hope to meet, including wide-eyed hippies, subversive students, computer nerds, entrepreneurs, hackers, crackers and financial backers. Some lost out and some became millionaires, but all played a part in transforming our world.
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By: Rod Canion
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Cyber Wars
- Hacks That Shocked the Business World
- By: Charles Arthur
- Narrated by: Joe Jameson
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Cyber Wars gives you the dramatic inside stories of some of the world's biggest cyber attacks. These are the game-changing hacks that make organisations around the world tremble and leaders stop and consider just how safe they really are. Charles Arthur provides a gripping account of why each hack happened, what techniques were used, what the consequences were and how they could have been prevented. Cyber attacks are some of the most frightening threats currently facing business leaders, and this book provides a deep insight into understanding how they work.
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For the security professional and average joe
- By Quella on 01-11-19
By: Charles Arthur
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Losing the Signal
- The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry
- By: Jacquie McNish, Sean Silcoff
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Losing the Signal is a riveting story of a company that toppled global giants before succumbing to the ruthlessly competitive forces of Silicon Valley. This is not a conventional tale of modern business failure by fraud and greed. The rise and fall of BlackBerry reveals the dangerous speed at which innovators race along the information superhighway.
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Fascinating
- By Gerardo A Dada on 09-05-15
By: Jacquie McNish, and others
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Modern Monopolies
- What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy
- By: Nicholas L. Johnson, Alex Moazed
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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What do Google, Snapchat, Tinder, Amazon, and Uber have in common, besides soaring market share? They're platforms - a new business model that has quietly become the only game in town. A platform, by definition, creates value by facilitating an exchange between two or more interdependent groups. So, rather than making things, they simply connect people. The advent of mobile computing and its ubiquitous connectivity have forever altered how we interact with each other. Yet, few people truly grasp the radical structural shifts of the last 10 years.
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Mostly notes for myself or highlights of the book
- By Gary H. on 11-16-17
By: Nicholas L. Johnson, and others
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Computing: A Concise History
- The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Paul E. Ceruzzi
- Narrated by: Tim Andres Pabon
- Length: 3 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The history of computing could be told as the story of hardware and software or the story of the Internet or the story of "smart" handheld devices, with subplots involving IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter. In this concise and accessible account of the invention and development of digital technology, computer historian Paul Ceruzzi offers a broader and more useful perspective. He identifies four major threads that run throughout all of computing's technological development.
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Hard to Believe it an "MIT Press" Thing
- By Sam on 05-15-22
By: Paul E. Ceruzzi
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Targeted
- How Technology Is Revolutionizing Advertising and the Way Companies Reach Consumers
- By: Mike Smith
- Narrated by: Michael Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Far from the catchy television spots and sleek magazine spreads are the comparatively modest ads that pop up on websites and in Internet searches. But don't be fooled - online advertising is exploding. Growing at a compound annual rate near 20%, it is now the second-largest advertising channel in the United States. Part history, part guidebook, part prediction for the future, Targeted tells the story of the companies, individuals, and innovations driving this revolution.
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Dense Language, Mediocre Narration
- By Fawn on 12-06-16
By: Mike Smith
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Becoming Facebook
- The 10 Challenges That Defined the Company That's Disrupting the World
- By: Mike Hoefflinger
- Narrated by: Nicholas Techosky
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Facebook's founding is legend: In a Harvard dorm, wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg invented a new way to connect with friends...and the rest is history. But for the people who actually molded this great idea into a game-changing $300 billion company, the experience was far more tumultuous and uncertain than we might expect. Mike Hoefflinger was one of those Facebook insiders.
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mainly a tribute to the success of FB
- By Anonymous User on 10-07-18
By: Mike Hoefflinger
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Group Genius
- The Creative Power of Collaboration
- By: Keith Sawyer
- Narrated by: Jonathan Marosz
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In this authoritative and fascinating new audiobook, Keith Sawyer, a psychologist at Washington University, tears down some of the most popular myths about creativity and erects new principles in their place. He reveals that creativity is always collaborative: even when you're alone. Sawyer's audiobook is filled with compelling stories about the inventions that changed our world.
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Worth reading
- By Glenn on 12-29-10
By: Keith Sawyer
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Matchmakers
- The New Economics of Multisided Platforms
- By: Richard Schmalensee, David S. Evans
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Many of the most dynamic public companies, from Alibaba to Facebook to Visa, and the most valuable start-ups, such as Airbnb and Uber, are matchmakers that connect one group of customers with another group of customers. Economists call matchmakers multisided platforms because they provide physical or virtual platforms for multiple groups to get together. Dating sites connect people with potential matches, for example, and ride-sharing apps do the same for drivers and riders.
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Repetition of one business all the time !
- By Razi T. on 06-03-20
By: Richard Schmalensee, and others
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Captive Audience
- By: Susan P. Crawford
- Narrated by: Carol Hendrickson
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Ten years ago, the United States stood at the forefront of the Internet revolution. With some of the fastest speeds and lowest prices in the world for high-speed Internet access, the nation was poised to be the global leader in the new knowledge-based economy. Today that global competitive advantage has all but vanished because of a series of government decisions and resulting monopolies that have allowed dozens of countries, including Japan and South Korea, to pass us in both speed and price of broadband.
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Great info, dry delivery
- By Chase Vaughan on 02-12-16
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The Friendly Orange Glow
- The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture
- By: Brian Dear
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 21 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn't even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers - some of them only high school students - in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was not only years but light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers.
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Memory lane for the cyberist.
- By Robert C. Hickcox on 08-08-18
By: Brian Dear
What listeners say about When Computing Got Personal
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Steven Gehlen
- 08-20-22
Great details on the history of personal computing
Even though I know a lot about the history of personal computing, I learned some new things in this book. I really enjoyed listening to it.
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- Walker Dodson
- 08-14-16
Good Book, Horrible Narrator.
The book was great. I learned a lot. however I could only listen to a chapter at a time because the narrator was so monotoned. the narrator caused me to get bored. I felt as if I was in a college class that I was forced to take.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Andrew
- 05-13-16
Good material, distracting performance
Narrator had an over-fussy pronunciation style that I found distracting, and didn't appear to be following the meaning of what he was reading, resulting in odd word emphases and distracting pauses. very slow delivery too, though listening on 125% speed helped with that.
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1 person found this helpful
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- David Molay
- 05-18-15
Fond memories.
A very good retelling of the creation of the personal computer. Some of the stories differed from other versions I've heard, but that's to be expected.
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- John O.
- 03-20-16
A fun trip down the halls of PC history.
What made the experience of listening to When Computing Got Personal the most enjoyable?
I enjoyed the stories of the early frontier days of the Personal Computer market.
What did you like best about this story?
Good coverage of the early and middle PC era.
What about Norman Gilligan’s performance did you like?
It was soothing to listen to, though some of the pronunciation of computer terms was incorrect.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
I wouldn't say it was a particularly moving story, but an interesting one.
Any additional comments?
A fantastic listen.
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- Star Writer
- 10-15-22
Great Read-Fact filled.
This is a great listen. It is filled with A LOT of history and great info. if this topic is your passion and you love vintage Tech and vintage Tech history.....it will be awesome.
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- Kevin N.
- 03-28-17
Great Book, Terrible Narrator
The book is well-worth reading; however, the narrator lacks style, intonation, and, overall, performs worse than Alexa or Google Assistant. Don't waste your money/credits. Buy the book.
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- william christenbury
- 04-30-22
Kinda a hodgepodge of material
This book is strange. Some original material but also some repurposed material from the pbs show “revenge of the nerds” some quotes wildly out of context and out of the blue. I enjoyed it non the less.
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- J.C.
- 09-15-20
A bit dry but worth powering through for the gems
This is a very straightforward history of the first personal computers to present day, briefly touching on the industry giants (both individuals and organizations) that cultivated them.
Unlike "Where Wizards Stay Up Late" or "The Innovators", this book is largely absent of anecdotes and intrigue. instead, expect to read a series of years, facts, and names, as well as several computer specs.
Narration is monotonous but crisp. It may be the source material reflected in the reader, or a fact-based direction. I enjoy and am calmed by most British accents in narration, though some might find UK pronunciation jarring. Acronyms are pronounced as initialisms, i.e. "a. r. p. a." rather than "arpah" (ARPA).
Where the book shines is in its tidbits and trivia, where you briefly learn this or that nugget, like how the first Apple computers only had speakers to support the video game "Break Out".
It's worth the 11 hours or so for a general history but there are certainly more interesting listens.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Rich
- 02-15-17
Fairly interesting book... slow/droning narrator
I don't know what came first, but this book is almost identical to the content (interview quotations and all) of the documentary series "Rise of the Nerds."
If you don't have time, I'd save your money and just watch that 3 part series. It has actual clips of the figures portrayed in the book like Moore, Gates, the creator of VisiCalc and the Homebrew organizer guy who all are much more interesting to listen to than this book's narrator (who's about as dry as a popcorn fart, and not as fast).
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1 person found this helpful