Folklore is defined as myths, tales and practices of people transmitted orally—stories from different perspectives about a common event or time in history. The best thing about telling folklore stories is that if compiled you can start to weed out the fiction from the truth if enough people continue to tell consistent stories. To me this sounds like an amazing way to write a book on most any subject if the participants have first hand knowledge about a particular subject and you have a trustworthy person or team to sort through all the stories. The result should be an engaging and "mostly" true account based on true first hand knowledge.
Revolution in Valley - The insanely great story of how the Mac was made (O'Reilly) is exactly this type of account. The idea originally came about when the author Andy Hertzfeld started folklore.org, a site built from software that he developed that allows groups of people to contribute stories on a particular subject. It allows others to rate those stories, moderators to delete offending or opposing views, etc. with the ultimate goal of providing the truth in short stories. I guess the concept is not completely different than the Amazon rating system where people offer their opinions about a product that they have personally experienced. Then the software compiles all those opinions into one rating that should speak to the overall quality of that item.
For people interested in seeing the birth of one of the greatest technological advances in our recent past come to life this book is for you. The fact that the viewpoint is from the inside out makes the story that much more engaging because you know that it is the truth, not some corporate CEO spinning the story to fit his legacy.
I personally could not put this book down and I plan on reading it again soon because it is just that good. I have to admit that I have been and probably always will be a Mac user if I can help it so I truly enjoyed the behind the scenes, geeky development stories about how the Mac came to life and how all the developers really felt they were on the verge of something great. It was very inspiring to read stories about people not interested in money or fame, just the idea of making a great product for everyday people.
Even if you are not interested in the Mac specifically, this book is still totally engrossing. The book could be about building a black and white widget but that doesn't decrease the inherent value of this book in learning about technology, management, friendship, commitment to greatness, and progress. The fact that the first Macintosh was one of the greatest and most wide spread technological achievements in the past 20 years only makes the book that much more enjoyable.
Some of my personal favorite stories were not even Mac related like the story about Burrel Smith promising best friendship to co-workers in return for favors, just to turn around and promise best friendship to another a few minutes later. He justified this by saying there can only be one best friend at a given instant of time but best friendships my be highly dynamic. The average length of a best friendship is three to five milliseconds. So there's no problem in having a new B.F.R. a second or two later. Another great story is how some of the staff were invited to the huge rock festival (US Festival) that founder Steve Wozniak threw (since he was insanely rich by then). They ended up getting thrown out by Bill Graham and a bouncer without his knowledge just before getting to announce Santana to the attendees. Pretty funny in deed.
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