During the bottom of the last recession, I self-published a book on Moore's Law (right).
The idea was to examine how technology had changed the world in my lifetime, to look at the past, present and future of Moore's Law, its antecedents, and its relations.
A marketing "expert" suggested I call the finished book The Blankenhorn Effect and I did — to my shame.
Not that I don't like me. I do, very much. Not that I don't like being associated with change. It's my beat. But in retrospect that title was over-the-top. Change isn't about me. I'm just an observer of change.
In the end the book sold only a very few copies. I didn't push it very hard. But it's still available at Google Books, and I still get a regular stream of checks from an online publisher.
These checks inspired me to work up an update, which I have now begun. And I would really like a publisher, although it will have a new title.
Now for the really important bit.
I am amazed at how much the tech world has changed since this book was first written, in 2001.
Each time I start working on a chapter, expecting it to be easy, it turns out that every reference has to be updated, and the differences are stark.
- In the original book I compared the Apple II to a PowerMac, then the company's top of the line desktop. Now I'm looking at an iMac, built into the flat screen, and $500 less than that old Apple II.
- The original conception of Moore's Law — circuit lines getting closer — has been faced and overcome. Today's lower-power chips and multi-core chips continue delivering speed increases despite the fact that the distance between circuit lines has declined by just one-quarter in all that time.
- I had nothing on stick memory in the original book, nor on open source. The idea of a Linux laptop, with no moving parts, was science fiction.
In some ways, however, I find I was overly-optimistic:
- The cost of my ISP account has not changed since 1998. I'm paying just as much for bits now as I was then, thanks to Bush era monopoly policies.
- The cost of wireless data has likewise stayed stubbornly high, for the same reason.
- I am really no more productive than before, and not much more productive than I was 25 years ago.
As a result I am adding some new chapters to the book. One is on training or education. One is on software. One is on how Moore's Law can be violated by bad public policy.
The new book will be much better than the old one, and my original vision for it is also coming true.
Thanks to devices like the Kindle, and the iPhone software emulating the Kindle, I can now produce the book as I intended it to be produced — with hyperlinks built-in. And with an accompanying Web site where the discussion can be continued and enhanced.
What I need is a company that understands this vision and can do what I consider the "scut work." Things like marketing, printing, editing, and publicizing it.
This was always designed to be more than a book. I see it as an interactive exploration of technology's history, and its future. I would like to build this book into a real community, so that I edit rather than write the next edition, and so that it can live beyond what's left of my career.
I find the no increase in productivity to be a popular misconception. Sure if we judge just in terms of how much product is produced per worker, there is no difference or maybe even a decline in the PC age. But what happens if we also consider quality. Documents (especially presentations) are so much nicer and more informative than pre-PC. Not to mention how well researched things are thanks to the Internet and the ease of actually doing quantitative analysis by yourself using spreadsheets. If you took all the documents produced by a typical office worker in 1980 and those produced by his counterpart today, it would be very illuminating. Both stacks of paper would be the same size, but the quality and informational content would be night and day. The work of the 1980 guy would very amateurish and very light on data and number crunching.
I find the no increase in productivity to be a popular misconception. Sure if we judge just in terms of how much product is produced per worker, there is no difference or maybe even a decline in the PC age. But what happens if we also consider quality. Documents (especially presentations) are so much nicer and more informative than pre-PC. Not to mention how well researched things are thanks to the Internet and the ease of actually doing quantitative analysis by yourself using spreadsheets. If you took all the documents produced by a typical office worker in 1980 and those produced by his counterpart today, it would be very illuminating. Both stacks of paper would be the same size, but the quality and informational content would be night and day. The work of the 1980 guy would very amateurish and very light on data and number crunching.
I like how you’re applying what you’ve learned from your earlier effort to the new edition. I look forward to the ‘finished’ work. The idea of building the book into an online community is terrific. I hope you can find the right publisher. I have to disagree with one point from the previous commentator. I see far more errors in published works now than I ever saw prior the age of digital publishing – errors in language, mechanics and, less often, content. I attribute this to laziness. People think that running spellcheck on a document guarantees correct spelling. I see disordered pages and typos in printed books. Blogs and corporate websites which repeat or lose content. Spreadsheets producing incorrect data (from which incorrect conclusions are drawn) because of a macro error. I think the ease with which these errors can be corrected has prompted folks to be less careful before hitting the ‘publish’ key.
I like how you’re applying what you’ve learned from your earlier effort to the new edition. I look forward to the ‘finished’ work. The idea of building the book into an online community is terrific. I hope you can find the right publisher. I have to disagree with one point from the previous commentator. I see far more errors in published works now than I ever saw prior the age of digital publishing – errors in language, mechanics and, less often, content. I attribute this to laziness. People think that running spellcheck on a document guarantees correct spelling. I see disordered pages and typos in printed books. Blogs and corporate websites which repeat or lose content. Spreadsheets producing incorrect data (from which incorrect conclusions are drawn) because of a macro error. I think the ease with which these errors can be corrected has prompted folks to be less careful before hitting the ‘publish’ key.
Tim, go back and look at your old stuff again. I’ve read over a thousand books — including hundreds printed before 1980, and only a handful didn’t have a typographical error/omitted word or other problem. It is near impossible to have 50,000+ words without errors. Newspapers and magazines have always been rife with such errors. As for errors in workplace documents, I agree those have been on the upswing, but the real culprit there are two things that may have coincided with the rise of the PC but are not directly related: much less emphasis on grammar and spelling in school and the near complete abolition of skilled secretaries in the name of right sizing. Still I often wonder if errors are really increasing or it is just that we have become more sensitive to them as we are so used to proof-reading our own documents — something that would have been handled by a secretary in the past.
Tim, go back and look at your old stuff again. I’ve read over a thousand books — including hundreds printed before 1980, and only a handful didn’t have a typographical error/omitted word or other problem. It is near impossible to have 50,000+ words without errors. Newspapers and magazines have always been rife with such errors. As for errors in workplace documents, I agree those have been on the upswing, but the real culprit there are two things that may have coincided with the rise of the PC but are not directly related: much less emphasis on grammar and spelling in school and the near complete abolition of skilled secretaries in the name of right sizing. Still I often wonder if errors are really increasing or it is just that we have become more sensitive to them as we are so used to proof-reading our own documents — something that would have been handled by a secretary in the past.
To be honest you should change the Title as well as the cover design.
To be honest you should change the Title as well as the cover design.
I agree with you, you should change the title.Thanks for sharing your information with us.
I agree with you, you should change the title.Thanks for sharing your information with us.