Someone needs to write a well-researched book on the 1980s home computer revolution, how that presaged a lot of the changes now occurring, and how it so much less top-down than what’s happening now. In some ways it was the last refuge of the tinkerer and the dilettante — now all has been professionalized and is much more boring. Sure, the technology is much better but the possibilities have been radically foreshortened.

I’m not so much interested in the technology — I was there. I used most of it. I don’t need to be told about it again. I’m more interested in the sociological shifts that occurred as shareware and freeware altered how people thought of software, how this changed people’s relationships to information, how BBSes and other early online services played into this, and how these people were all shoved aside and told they were worthless amateurs as the suits and “professionals” moved in.

That’s the history I want to read.