Finally, the nerds triumphed

I gonna talk about the documentary Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996) by Robert X. Cringely (a pseudonym of the technology journalist Mark Stephens). 

First of all, I want a say that I found the documentary interesting, I think is narrated in an instructive but non boring way, and also with an entertaining tone and has an appropriated narrative rhythm.

The documentary gives us the idea that nerds are only those weak and thin boys, who eat pizza and drink coke, and also wear big glasses and need to impress their classmates because they’re always laughing at them. I think that it’s a wrong stereotype. But, anyway, we can see them (some boys, but also some girls) running important companies and earning amazing amounts of money, so maybe they don’t care about those stereotypes.

The documentary is useful to know how the biggest companies of the informatics sector, Apple and Windows, began, surprisingly for me, in the 70’s, and grew up till what they’re today. I found surprising thing was that Bill Gates was next to Apple. It’s curious, if you think that today are archrivals in the informatics market. The film also helps us to understand the huge number of hours that they devoted to developing the computers we have nowadays.

I found especially fun the part in which we can see the oldest personal computer in the world, the one without any keyboard, mouse, screen, or printer entry. How many times in human History an initially useless gadget has become so important?  

In the film also appears an interesting idea, the rise of personal computers was drove by young people. That’s usual. That young people, with their new and fresh ideas, stimulate some big revolutions, and also some small changes, that affect our life.

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