Great (non) Nerd Reading #1

It is important -- even vital to the healthy evolution of our society -- that the almost-completely separate worlds of nerd and non-nerd come together more often. The disconnect between the nerd and non-nerd worlds causes no end of problems, and worse, now at least 5% of the population are incomprehensible, insufferable smartasses.

It's particularly important to me because I am among the few self-described "geeks" that is able to successfully straddle both worlds, and (this is the rare part) not have secret contempt for either. I am extremely social, and yet complain that the questions on Beat the Geeks are way too easy.

Thus, periodically in this space I will entreat nerds and non-nerds alike to go and have a look at text, pictures or URLs I think manage to bridge that gap effectively. Today's debut comes from the fine folks at O'Reilly Publishers, who print very nerdy (and highly-regarded) books with (for no apparent reason) line art of animals on the cover. Oh well, it beats being called a dummy before you've even paid for the thing, or having the buyer of the book equated with a chimpanzee.

(Yes, non-computer-book buyers, this is really how the nerd book industry presents its non-programmer type tomes to the masses.)

In attempting to write up an introduction to a book very few of my readers would be particularly interested in, Cocoa Applications (I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Apps, myself!), authors Simson Garfinkel* and Michael Mahoney have accidentally -- accidentally, mind you -- written the true history of personal computing. Because the book this article is intended to set the stage for is aimed at programmers, not John Q. Public, the tone and pace are intelligent but easy to understand, exactly the way most tech books aren't. Obviously, as the book is about Mac OS X and programming, the history starts off with a lot of Mac talk, but don't worry Windows users ... the facts are still the facts. Stick with it. I think anyone who, like David Byrne, often wonders "well, how did we get here?" when it comes to technology would do very well to start here.

*remind me to bitch-slap his parents for naming him that.