On Old Technology Books…

I read a random exchange the other day between Kate Thomas and Margot Bloomstein about old tech books. I don’t even totally know what they were discussing, but it got me thinking about my weird penchant for buying or hanging onto industry books out of some kind of nostalgia.

I grabbed a bunch from my bookshelf and took a pic. There are so many stories –

Perl and CGI was the first programming book I ever bought. I was trying to build a form mailer for a page on the Citibank intranet. My friend Chris Murfin was teaching me Perl. I remember him saying, “It’s a ‘write-only’ language. Once you write it, it’s hard to figure out what you were trying to do.”

Web Content Management is the book Interwoven used to throw around during sales pitches. Tom Wentworth has stories about how they would toss this on the table. I re-read it a few years ago, and it’s almost about source code management, file concurrency, and version control, which must have been the big problems we were dealing with back then.

Dynamics in Document Design is a great book that my friend Lief Erickson sent me. He was pruning his collection, and I love the idea of “designing documents,” so he dropped it in the mail. Great book, and it has “LIEF” written in big letters across the open spine.

I own Phillip and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing because of a picture that Jeff Cram regrets sending me. He saw it at a used book sale (at a church, I think?) and sent me the pic as a joke. I immediately forced him to go back, pay $3 for it, and mail it to me. (Spoiler: “Alex” is a dog)

The 21st Century Intranet is one I bought long after it was published because someone (I think it was Martin White) said it had a great discussion of content governance (it does). I somehow ended up with two copies of this. I think I sent the second copy to Pam Drouin.

And finally, Content Management Bible is legendary. Bob Boiko wrote the praise quote for my first book, which was a wild experience. I had breakfast with him on the campus of UW ten years ago. Lovely guy. I actually started a podcast going through this book chapter by chapter. I think I’m seven or eight chapters in now. I should continue this.

I saw a quote the other day that went something like:

I cannot remember all the books I’ve read, just like I can’t remember all the meals I have eaten. But they have made me.

Absolutely true.