View source for What the Dormouse Said

{{Short description|2005 non-fiction book by John Markoff}}
{{Infobox book | <!-- See [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Books]] -->
| name          = What the Dormouse Said
| title_orig    = 
| translator    = 
| image         = What the Dormouse Said.jpg| caption = 
| author        = [[John Markoff]]
| cover_artist  = 
| country       = 
| language      = English
| series        = 
| genre         = 
| publisher     = [[Viking Press]]
| release_date  = 2005
| media_type    = Print (book)
| pages         = 310
| isbn          = 0-670-03382-0 
| dewey= 004.16 22
| congress= QA76.17 .M37 2005
| oclc= 57068812
| preceded_by   = 
| followed_by   = 
}}

'''''What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry''''', is a [[2005 in literature|2005]] [[non-fiction]] book by [[John Markoff]].  The book details the [[History of computing hardware (1960s-present)|history of the personal computer]], closely tying the ideologies of the [[collaboration]]-driven, [[World War II]]-era [[defense industry|defense research community]] to the embryonic [[cooperatives]] and [[psychedelics]] use of the American [[counterculture of the 1960s]].

The book follows the history chronologically, beginning with [[Vannevar Bush]]'s description of his inspirational [[memex]] machine in his 1945 article "[[As We May Think]]". Markoff describes many of the people and organizations who helped develop the ideology and technology of the computer as we know it today, including [[Doug Engelbart]], [[Xerox PARC]], [[Apple Computer]] and [[Microsoft Windows]].

Markoff argues for a direct connection between the counterculture of the late 1950s and 1960s (using examples such as [[Kepler's Books]] in [[Menlo Park, California|Menlo Park]], [[California]]) and the development of the computer industry. The book also discusses the early split between the idea of commercial and free-supply computing.

The main part of the title, "What the Dormouse Said," is a reference to a line at the end of the 1967 [[Jefferson Airplane]] song "[[White Rabbit (song)|White Rabbit]]": "Remember what [[The Dormouse|the dormouse]] said: feed your head."<ref name=AmSci>{{cite journal|last1=Lanier|first1=Jaron|title=Early Computing's Long, Strange Trip. ''What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry''. John Markoff|journal=[[American Scientist]]|date=July 2010|volume=93|issue=4|url=http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/early-computings-long-strange-trip|accessdate=June 26, 2015|at=Scientists' Nightstand > Bookshelf Detail|publisher=[[Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society]]|language=English|format=Book review|quote=John Markoff's ''What the Dormouse Said'' (the title is taken from the lyrics of the Jefferson Airplane song "White Rabbit") tells the story of the important period when the personal computer and the Internet as we know them came into being. He also describes how a new culture of drugs, sex and rock and roll was created at the same time as the computers, sometimes in the same rooms, by some of the same people.}}</ref> which is itself a reference to [[Lewis Carroll]]'s ''[[Alice's Adventures in Wonderland]]''.

== See also==
* ''[[Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution]]''
* [[Midpeninsula Free University]]
* [[Homebrew Computer Club]]
* ''[[The Soul of a New Machine]]''
* ''[[Microserfs]]''
* [[Steve Jobs]]
* ''[[Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer|Fire in the Valley]]''

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20141213080119/http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/pwork/0508/050814.htm Life Outside the Mainframe] (review from Peacework)

[[Category:History of computing]]
[[Category:2005 non-fiction books]]
[[Category:Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area]]
[[Category:Books about California]]
[[Category:Viking Press books]]


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