Nerds 2.0.1

What Hacker News says

1. driverdanOct 2026
   That's sad. I watched the first two parts of Nerds 2.0.1 earlier this year and haven't gotten around to part three. Triumph of the Nerds and Nerds 2.0.1 are a fantastic look at 90's tech. He managed to interview most of the top people.
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2. BluecobraOct 2026
   Also highly recommend watching Nerds 2.0.1 - A Brief History Of The Internet as well: https://archive.org/details/nerds-2.0.1-a-brief-history-of-t...
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3. andrehackerMar 2025
   Fascinating read as always Ken. It seems that the concept of a “Chorded Keyboard” from Douglas then spawned several relatively successful successors later on:

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard

   Growing up in the Netherlands in the 80s it was hard to not be aware of the “Velotype”: it had more keys and supposedly made it easier to learn the “chords”.

   Your reference to the book Nerds 2.0.1 is great, the book is a companion to the excelent PBS 3-part series from 1998

   https://archive.org/details/movies?tab=collection&query=Nerd...

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4. cfedukeApr 2023
   "Nerds 2.0.1" by Stephen Segaller, 1999

   I picked up a copy at Borders and read it over a summer. Fantastic. I still have my copy.

   "Code" by Charles Petzold, 2000

   There's a new edition as of 2022. I love Petzold's writing. If you did anything Win32 at the end of the 90s you probably did too.

   "In the Beginning... was the Command Line." Neal Stephenson, 1999

   I remember this book being fun to read. It was the time when acolytes of Stallman ran amok and Windows was doomed to perish leaving Linux to inherit the world.

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5. ZelphyrNov 2021
   Code Rush is one of my go-to's when I need inspiration. I was in tech when it came out and it really inspired me how much a group of dedicated programmers could do. https://archive.org/details/CodeRush_616

   Same for Triumph Of The Nerds and its follow-up, Nerds 2.0.1 - A Brief History Of The Internet. Fascinating to hear what went on in the back rooms and halls of the people creating the Internet and Web. https://archive.org/details/nerds-2.0.1-a-brief-history-of-t...

   Hackers Definitely some unrealistic Hollywood effects but, it's fun and is a good representation of how tech in the 90's felt.

   Antitrust It's fun to see the obvious digs at Bill Gates. John "Maddog" Hall consulted on this film which is why you see things like Gnome on all the screens. I got to talk to him in the hall at a conference once right after Antitrust came out. Really interesting guy.

   Sneakers: One of my all-time favorites. The premise wasn't super-realistic (guy figures out a back door to all encryption and murder ensues) but the technology of the time was otherwise pretty accurately represented, and the acting is superb.

   You'll notice that all of these came out over 20 years ago. I haven't seen much since that captures the feeling of what being in technology felt like to me. People still had that sense from the 60's and 70's that technology could be used to make the world better. People really did want to use technology for more than making money off of ads and personal data.

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6. weirdkidJul 2018
   Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet

   Robert X. Cringely's follow-up to Triumph of the Nerds was pretty good. It looks like you can watch the whole thing fit free on line now too - check the links at the bottom of the Wikipedia article.

   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerds_2.0.1

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