Troublemakers

Silicon Valley's Coming of Age

De: Leslie Berlin

Narrado por: Amanda Carlin

The richly told narrative of the Silicon Valley generation that launched five major high-tech industries in seven years, laying the foundation for today's technology-driven world.

At a time when the five most valuable companies on the planet are high-tech firms and nearly half of Americans say they cannot live without their cell phones, Troublemakers reveals the untold story of how we got here. This is the gripping tale of seven exceptional men and women, pioneers of Silicon Valley in the 1970s and early 1980s. Together they worked across generations, industries, and companies to bring technology from Pentagon offices and university laboratories to the rest of us. In doing so they changed the world.

In Troublemakers, historian Leslie Berlin introduces the people and stories behind the birth of the Internet and the microprocessor as well as Apple, Atari, Genentech, Xerox PARC, ROLM, ASK, and the iconic venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In the space of only seven years and 35 miles, five major industries - personal computing, video games, biotechnology, modern venture capital, and advanced semiconductor logic - were born.

During these same years, the first Arpanet transmission came into a Stanford lab, the university began licensing faculty innovations to businesses, and the Silicon Valley tech community began mobilizing to develop the lobbying clout and influence that have become critical components of modern American politics. In other words these were the years when one of the most powerful pillars of our modern innovation and political systems was first erected.

Featured among well-known Silicon Valley innovators like Steve Jobs, Regis McKenna, Larry Ellison, and Don Valentine are Mike Markkula, the underappreciated chairman of Apple who owned one-third of the company; Bob Taylor, who kick-started the Arpanet and masterminded the personal computer; software entrepreneur Sandra Kurtzig, the first woman to take a technology company public; Bob Swanson, the cofounder of Genentech; Al Alcorn, the Atari engineer behind the first wildly successful video game; Fawn Alvarez, who rose from an assembler on a factory line to the executive suite; and Niels Reimers, the Stanford administrator who changed how university innovations reach the public. Together these troublemakers rewrote the rules and invented the future.

©2017 Leslie Berlin (P)2017 Simon & Schuster

Good Story, Poor Reading

The reader is not a machine but unfortunately she seems to be imitating one. At first, I wasn't sure I would get through the book but after a while, I got into the story and got used to the reading. In the end, the book was pretty good overall.

A look at less known icons of Silicon Valley

This book covers the lives of some lesser known Valley founding individuals and how the culture of Silicon Valley helps it continue to innovate. It focuses on short period of time and is a well written and researched history. For those of us from the old "smoke stack" industries, it is enlightening. I did not find the reader annoying, just lacking emotion.

Great history of a brief period

Great history of a brief period of time that led to today's high tech industry. Very enjoyable!

either bad recording or robot voice

It really does sound like a robot. Or it could just be a bad recording.

The Robot Uprising Has Begun

Where does Troublemakers rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Most annoying book I've ever listened to.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Troublemakers?

Realizing the book was being read by a robot. A pretty good one, but a robot none the less.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Have you ever wanted to have Julie from Amtrak read you a book? If so, buy this book! If not, and if you'll be distracted by the odd inflections, weird little pauses and always slightly out of sync feeling of text to speech conversion, avoid this title.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Well, I listened to as much of it as I'm ever going to listen to in one setting. All of about 15 minutes worth of it to be exact. I kept hoping maybe it was a joke. "Hey, did you realize that the intro was read by a computer? Ain't science wonderful? Now here's a real person to read the book!" Sadly, that's not what happened.

Any additional comments?

Hire a human and record the book again.

Finally women of silicon valley get recognition

The author included a great, little-known story about Sandy Kurtzig, founder of ASK Group, and their landmark MANMAN software.

Great book. Horrible narrator.

A great book about the early days in Silicon Valley spoiled by a narrator who sounded like a robot, mispronounced names, and said "Silicone" instead of "Silicon."

robovoice narration

the book is hard to listen to because of the robotic voice, would be better to read

Do not allow text-to-speech on Audible

It is very clear from the tonality, and many sound elements, that the book is being narrated by a text-to-speech engine, and not a very good one at that (I have validated my impressions with software developers involved in the field, in addition to my own experience). I can't listen to 16.5 hours of this.

Audible: do not allow text-to-speech in your catalogue please. When we buy an Audible title it is to have the satisfaction of having it read by a human with the sensibilities of a human. If we want text-to-speech we can just buy the Kindle version and have it narrated using the operating system's text-to-speech narration service for the visually impaired. I understand that having automated narration is much cheaper to produce, but also understand that the value of the end product is also much, much, much lower.

I hope this is not an indication of things to come.

A must-read

in order to know where you're going it might be nice to know where you've been yet at the same time the message in this book is clearly not to be locked into the past but to look forward into the future. For those of us who like to read in this area, this nicely written book fills in a few more details even for the most well-read aficionado. there's a lot of food for thought of this book.