Computer sagas make a right riveting read

The last subject I ever thought I would find interesting when I was a child was computers.

They were not a sexy topic. They were also not an item the average person ever saw.

They were enormous, metal and glass contraptions kept in air-conditioned rooms in universities or research facilities. They sent astronauts into space and took pride of place in science-fiction movies, resplendent in blinking, multi-coloured lights and emitting what we all understood to be appropriately scientific bleeps.

But the coming of the silicon microchip changed everything. In an astonishingly short period of time - less than 30 years - these one-time multi million dollar behemoths steadily shrank in size, emerged from locked labs and crossed over into the corporate world. At first, the refrigerator-sized repositories of company data, computers continued to drop in size and cost and, once small enough to do so, lodged themselves on business desktops and then in homes. Now, at a fraction of the price, and with more power and memory than the vast data banks that landed men on the moon in 1969, PCs are so ubiquitous that they are considered commodities. Amazing that in less than half a lifetime we have gone from vacuum-tube mainframes and HAL to laptops, the World-Wide Web, Tombraider III, the PalmPilot and Napster.

That journey from top-secret lab to the desktop carried with it an unfolding drama, or rather, several simultaneously unfolding dramas, for the microchip brought digitally driven change, opportunity and upheaval in the sciences, society, politics, business and the arts. Fortunately, many people have chosen to document those changes in books that, at their best, inform and clarify, surprise and humble, even amaze and enthrall. Like novels, some simply tell a good tale well, while others contain writing of great virtuosity. Others, annoyingly, are clearly cash-in books, shallow explorations of a subject that a publisher or writer has deemed commercially hip.

Since it's a gift-giving time, I thought I'd offer a few suggestions for technophiles. Thirtysomething years after the advent of the microchip, a body of writing is emerging that is giving the technology sector imaginative shape and definition. A set of classics now exists to form the heart of any tech library. Depending on one's interest, the bookshelves can fill up in many interesting ways. Or perhaps you want to indulge yourself. All the books below are personal favourites. Unfortunately, most bookshops do not stock many tech-oriented books, so it is likely that you'll need to ask your favourite bookshop to order them for you, or try Amazon.co.uk, which should have nearly all in stock.

The Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder. Written in 1981, this tale of the obsessive, frenetic race to create a new computer at Data General ranks as one of the best books ever written on the computing industry and remains a top seller 20 years on. An absolutely fascinating insight into the minds of programmers and system designers and beautifully written. Perhaps no other writer has so poetically explained the inner workings of a computer.

Accidental Empires, by Robert X. Cringely. Better known as the book that inspired the television series Revenge of the Nerds, Accidental Empires is a droll romp through personal computing history, with particular focus on Microsoft and Apple, Gates and Jobs. Cringely's acerbic writing style will keep you laughing and makes the book extremely accessible.

Where Wizards Stay Up Late, by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon. Still the best history of the Internet, full of interviews with the pioneers. A smooth and compelling read. The Victorian Internet, by Tom Standage. A great companion volume to Wizards, and proof that there's nothing completely new under the sun, not even the Net. Standage's entertaining little book takes a look at the Internet's precursor, the telegraph, and finds startling similarities between the changes to business and society then, and those we see happening due to the Internet today.

Computer: a History of the In- formation Machine, by Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Asprey. Written in 1996, Com- puter takes the reader through the early history of computing, from Victorian Charles Babbage's calculating machine, through the world wars and into the modern age. Comprehensive and highly readable. For a similarly detailed and lively history of the invention of the transistor, try Crystal Fire by Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson.

The Nudist on the Late Shift, by Po Bronson. One of the more adept and stylish writers on the technology beat. This collection of essays examines the microcultures of Silicon Valley and lets the detail accumulate into a coherent large picture. His bitingly funny chapter on software salesmen is far and away one of the best pieces of writing on the world-unto-itself Valley. A novelist as well as essayist, Bronson's second novel, The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest, must have the perfect title for a tale of 1990s start-up madness.

The New New Thing, by Michael Lewis. Another wonderful, dryly humorous writer, Lewis takes the opposite tack to Bronson. Rather than looking at many people to distill out the essence of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship, Lewis focuses solely on Silicon Graphics and Netscape founder Jim Clark in order to use the individual as example of the whole. The pageturner of a book takes off like a shot and provides non-stop entertainment, as well as insight straight through to the end.

Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its Discon- tents, by Ellen Ullman. A thoughtful, funny and elegant writer, Ullman, a programmer, is admired by tech-heads for her ability to exactly articulate the joys and frustrations of programming. One of the best and most accessible humanisers of cyberculture and a joy to read.

And a few brief mentions: If you like sagas of individual companies and their driving figures, I think these are particularly good company chronicles: Insanely Great (Steven Levy's amiable history of Apple - his book Hackers is also good); The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison (Mike Wilson on Oracle and its flamboyant founder); Hard Drive (James Wallace and Jim Erickson's hard-hitting profile of Bill Gates and Microsoft); Inside Intel (Tim Jackson's dissection of Intel and Andy Grove); and Big Blues (Paul Carroll on IBM through the early 1990s, before its remake under Lou Gerstner).

Many more could be included, but these are a good start. Happy reading.

klillington@irish-times.ie