This book is very much a snapshot in time, and although parts of it are amusingly pinned to the pre-dotcom 90s (interactive multi-media products?) the core of the book is about the relationships between a group of young geeks working together and it holds its own in 2015 quite well.
Reading this did lead to a lot of reflection on things that have changed over the last twenty or so years- this book is pre-google, pre-smart-phone era and the group has the same sorts of ongoing discussions and debates that we had in my twenties that simply don't happen anymore- someone googles the question and the discussion is shut down.
This is probably Coupland's most accessible book, but it does suffer from a very Coupland-esque non-ending.
Here's a good flavor of the book. These are the narrators notes from a conference:

“29 Steps: My Trip
to the
Interactive Multimedia Seminar”
by Daniel Underwood
1)
Some people believe that the suspension of disbelief is destroyed by interactivity.
2)
The people who attend “Multimedia Seminars” aren’t the same people who design games. Their shirts are ironed, they carry unscuffed leather attaché cases, they’re infinitely earnest and they look like they work for Prudential-Bache and Kidder-Peabody. These suits are all bluffing now, but soon enough they’ll “get it” and they will become “visionaries.”
3)
Narratives (stories) traditionally come to a definite end (unlike life); that’s why we like movies and literature — for that sense of closure —because they end
4)
The stakes for multimedia may actually turn out to be embarrassingly small in the short run — like Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers, or Hasbro cranking out board game versions of The Partridge Family, The Banana Splits, and Zoom.
5)
With interactivity, one tries to give “the illusion of authorship” to people who couldn’t otherwise author.
Thought: maybe the need to be told stories is like the need to have sex. If you want to hear a story, you want to hear a story — you want to be passive and sit back around the fire and listen. You don’t want to write the story yourself.
6)
This sick thing just happened: I had this moment when I looked up and everyone had been picking at the baby zits on their foreheads and everybody’s forehead was bleeding! It was like stigmata. So gross. Even Karla.
7)
“There’s an endemic inability in the software industry to estimate the amount of time required for a software project.” (*TRUE*!)
8)
Networked games, like where you have one person playing against another, are hot because you don’t have to waste development dollars creating artificial intelligence. Players provide free AI.
9)
The 8 Models of Interactivity (as far as I can see)
i) The Arcade model
Like Terminator: kill or be killed.

ii) The Coffee Table Book model
Enter anywhere/leave anywhere; pointless in the end; zero replayability factor.

iii) The Universe Creation model
I built you and I can crush you.

iv) The Binary Tree model
Limited number of options; reads from left to right; tightly controlled mini-dramas.

v) The Pick-a-Path model
Does our hero smooch with Heather Locklear, or not — you decide! Expensive. Unproven entertainment value. Audiences don’t pay money to work.

vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents: half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

vii) The Agatha Christie model
A puzzle is to be solved using levels, clues, chases, and exploration.

viii) Experience Simulation models
Flight simulators, sport games.
10)
I wonder if we oversentimentalize the power of books.
11)
Studios in Hollywood are trying to sucker in writers by burying multimedia rights into the boilerplate of contracts. It’s intellectual gill-netting. They say they’ve “always been doing it historically”… assuming “since July” means historically.
12)
The extraordinary cost of producing multimedia games theoretically is supposed to exclude little companies from entering the market, but it’s the little companies, I’m noticing, that are coming up with all of the “hits.” Hope for Oop!.
13)
Karla and I met this cool-looking woman at lunch, Irene, and so we had coffee with her before the afternoon session began. It turns out she’s a makeup artist for multimedia movies, and she wants to get into production herself. Karla said, “Gee, you look really tired,” and she said, “Oh — I’ve been working double shifts every day for two weeks.”
So I asked her, “What kind of things are people filming for multimedia games?” and she said, “It’s always the same… Sir Lancelot, Knights of the Round Table, thrones, chalices, damsels. Can’t somebody come up with something new? My Prince Arthur wig is getting all tired-looking.” I suggested she use a Marilyn Monroe wig.
14)
Ideally in a game you have hardheaded adventures, but at the end you get a glimpse of the supernatural.
15)
In Los Angeles everyone’s writing a screenplay. In New York everyone’s writing a novel. In San Francisco, everyone’s developing a multimedia product.
16)
There’s a different mental construction in operation when you’re playing tennis as opposed to when you’re reading a book. With adrenaline-based competitive sports, the thought mode is: “I want to kill this fucker. “It’s the spirit of testing yourself; accomplishment. You are gripped. Suspension of disbelief is not an issue
17)
A multimedia product has to deliver $1 per hour’s worth of entertainment or you’ll get slagged by word-of-mouth.
18)
The great Atari gaming collapse of 1982 (*sigh* I remember it well).
19)
Games are about providing control for nine year olds… “the bigger and neater the entity I can control, the better.”
20)
Multimedia has become a “packaged goods” industry now. The box copy is more important than the experience. But how do you write cool sexy box copy for a game like Tetris? You can’t.
21)
Cool term: “Manseconds”: (Ergonomic unit of measurement applied to keyboards, joysticks).
22)
“Embedded intelligence”: (Intelligence buried in the nooks and crannies of code and storyboard design).
23)
Last year at a Christmas party up in Seattle, there were all these little kids — all highly sugared and on the brink of hysteria — but instead of screaming, they sat complacently by the TV playing SEGA games. The games were like “Child Sedation Devices.” It was spooky.
Susan was there. She said, “Just think, in 50 years these same kids will be sitting at the switches of our life-support systems figuring out a way to play a game by biofeedbacking our failing EKGs. Me, I seem to remember that when I was younger, overly sugared brats were sent down into the basement to fend for themselves, like Lord of the Flies.”
24)
How will games progress as 30somethings turn into 50somethings? (“Cardigan: The Adventure”)
25)
Flight Simulation games are actually out-of-body experience emulators. There must be all of these people everywhere on earth right now, waiting for a miracle, waiting to be pulled out of themselves, eager for just the smallest sign that there is something finer or larger or miraculous about our existence than we had supposed.
26)
“The replayability problem “(Engineering a desire for repetition).
27)
I think “van art” and Yes album covers were the biggest influence in game design.
28)
I wonder if I’ve missed the boat on CD-ROM interactive — if I’m too old. The big companies are zeroing in on the 10-year-olds. I think you only ever truly feel comfortable with the level of digitization that was normal for you from the age of five to fifteen. I mean sure, I can make new games workable, but it won’t be a kick the way Tetris was. Or will it?
29)
In the end, multimedia interactive won’t resemble literature so much as sports.

Delightful!

This was a balm for my soul as I waded through the most stressful work month I can recall.

Following a friend group of Microsoft employees who depart for a Silicon Valley startup in the mid-90s, Microserfs should feel dated, but it surprisingly... doesn't?

Yes, there are "wait what" moments (imagine turning on the TV and NOT having subtitles automatically available?), but Coupland's meditations on man-meets-machine are as relevant as ever. We're still struggling to square these circles in the 2020s.

Also, it's FUNNY. I realised mid-read that Microserfs is that most cursed of novel forms, the... novel-in-flash. To be clear, a novel-in-flash is a concept that exists only in writing workshops, among people who think they can sneeze out a 500-word vignette every day for 160 days and then have a novel at the end of it. Most novels in flash should be called novels in FLUSH because they deserve the toilet, but anyway... Microserfs actually is hundreds of stark, lovely standalone story bricks that fit together into a Lego wall of an overall novel. That's fucken HARD TO DO.

Slight points-deduction for some weird character/narrative choices. (Here, every love is insta-love, especially internet love, but I guess this is the 90s, so no one's watched 300 episodes of Catfish. Dusty is a montrous amalgamation of Coupland's inability to write convincing female characters. Allegedly, there's a character named Emmett in this, but I have no idea who he is?) Anyway, did I mention...

Delightful!

I just dropped the book on the table and I'm thinking of rereading many of its parts. It's amazing how much one can learn from a work of fiction so cleverly crafted and so loyal to the culture it intends to explore. What Coupland achieved is a truly fascinating take on why the Valley ignites so much obsession, even decades before HBO's Silicon Valley came along.

The way Dan and his friends are portrayed is worryingly relatable to many of us who in any level deal with technology and its culture. The whole 'having a life' trope ends being exquisite. And in the end, I cried. That's always something to celebrate.

About fads: "language is such technology"

This book is a fascinating look into early 90's software culture. When Microsoft and Bill ruled the world, and silicon valley was just gaining momentum.

Its amazing the changes the "information superhighway" brought us! I think Social Networking is born from the lack of geeks (those who make software) having a life in the 90's. These geeks, bogged down in technology (internet, cell phones, email, dvd's, movies, tv shows), found a way to socialize within the parameters of the technology. Then it caught on with others. Hello online dating. Hello friendster.

https://5cense.com/21/864.htm

I was reading Microserfs, a novel about coders in the 1990’s, when I suddenly had a great idea. What if I used technology to write down my thoughts and totally zany random observations while I was reading the book? Then I could post my e-thoughts onto a Goodreads review board and get all of the likes and +1’s. This struck me as very one point oh, so here it is.

Random thought: Replace IBM with Microsoft, Microsoft with Apple, and Bill for Steve and you’ve got Microserfs for the 2000s.

If Microserfs was a Jeopardy board the categories would be:
-Pop culture references from the 90’s
-Technology firms in the 90’s
-Animals vs. Human Beings: What’s the difference?
-Annoying Formatting that tries to be “clever”
-THE FUTURE
-Play Doh and Legos
-The word “post-modern”
-Mind Body Dualism

Douglas Coupland probably did some research but it’s clear he’s not much of a nerd. I am not a coder, but even I know that if a product is not ready seven days before it ships, our hero probably would not be wandering around talking to people or preparing to take vacation time. He would be sitting in his cubicle for 14 hour shifts, trying desperately to make the deadline. Realism!

This is a random list of words that makes up my computer’s subconscious. Pretend they’re all formatted funny for no reason:
-Manifesto Novices' Chase
-Handyside v United Kingdom
-Trimix
-Randall Dougherty
-The Basel Convention


Here’s a passage that makes no sense: “Abe is against the pure gung-ho-ishness of pure research. He says that Interval [a technology firm] reminds him of an intellectual Watership Down.” I read that book cover-to-cover and I still have no idea what this reference means.

As I was coding on my Pentium 286, totally e-flaming all my net superhighway buddies, I realized that every one of the characters in this novel were getting significant others and getting in shape- they were getting a life. Dan was getting a life. Todd was getting a life. Susan was getting a life. Even Abe was getting a life. I didn’t care about any of them. It was just like an episode of Melrose Place. But then this startlingly banal observation was suddenly interrupted by an even more banal instant mail I got from my web e-mail servers. “What makes life worth living?” I was asked. Only one answer. Exclamation points at the end of paragraphs, of course!

Here is a list of all the italicized words on one, just one, page of this book:
-Remember (this counts as half, because for some reason the middle is italicized and the ends are not)
-reels
-just
-he’s
-his
-dating
-not
-truly
-me
-harder

I talked with Doug on the phone today. He said “This format is a great way to disguise the fact that nothing interesting is happening in this book.” I agreed. He said “In the future, we need to be one point oh. The future is like play-doh and our consciousness will be transferred into machines. I like buying stuff from Japan.” I sent him a wicked flame saying people don’t ever talk like this, and even if they did I would not want to hear them. I said to him that it kind of reminded me of Don Delillo. People were just standing around spouting philosophy one liners divorced of any context or meaning at each other. I told him I guess sometimes you get good stuff but most of the time it's a bunch of references and gibberish about machines, bodies, getting a life, and postmodernism. He broke down crying. Shiatsu massages!

Microserfs is a blast from the past, since I'm reading it in 2019. Which reminds me sharply of my time at Accenture (then Andersen Consulting) around that time in 1994, around that age (31) too. Much of the delayed coming of age of the techies at Bill tech monolith could be have been copied from my own life and work at that time. It gave my also some insights by way of hindsight in a way I had not expected to happen this late in life.
Sadly I never made the jump to be in a start-up like described in this novel disguised as a diary. Luckily I found love and had a little family which made me a more happy person then I was before.
Like the other contemporary works of Coupland, this one also seems very dated reading it 25 years later. Because of the heart warming and hopeful content. I can still recommend it today, even if the newer generation does not mass-produce nerdy drones like they did in the 80's and 90's anymore.

From Microserfs: I don't want to lose you. I can't imagine ever feeling this strongly about anything or anybody ever again. This was unexpected, my soul's connection to you. You stole my loneliness. No one knows that I was wishing for you, a thief, to enter my house of autonomy, that I had locked my doors but my Windows were open, hoping, but not believing, you would enter.

I think that sums up how fabulous this book is.

Im trying read more Douglas Copeland. It’s pretty interesting if your into the 90s. Not sure how I feel about epistolary novels, kinda hard for me to follow the plot.

Although this book is of its time, there is a high nostalgia factor here, at least for me, especially as I was nearly the same age as the author when he was writing in 1995. The story of several software developers in the middle 90s who form a kind of surrogate family and look for meaning in their lives is far from the experiences with which I was familiar, but the milieu is the same. And by that I mean the culture of the time rather than the place. What makes this different from, say, a film like Reality Bites (1994) is the ever-present questioning among these young code-writers of the changing relationship between humanity and technology. In that regard, and in his faithfulness to the reality of the period, Douglas Coupland, in a hundred years, may look like Emile Zola does to us now.

This is a very optimistic book, which also seems--looking back on it--to fit with the time. It isn't as if there weren't plenty of scary things still in existence during the period of 1993-2001, but in general there was a different feel to life than there is today. Or, again, so it seems to me. But I'm not in my twenties anymore either--things would probably look different to me now if I was 25.

Anyway...very enjoyable--the short snippet paragraph style may not be to everyone's taste, but it makes for a deceptively breezy read. If young adults had trouble deciding what their life meant in 1995, I can only imagine the trouble they're having nowadays. Whippersnappers.

I have read Microserfs probably 4-5 times over the years and I really just love this book. I can't even tell you exactly what it is, but I just enjoy every minute of it. My favorite Coupland book, for sure.

DNF - I had enjoyed a previous book by Coupland and dove into this one with anticipation but quickly realized that nope, not the same. This one is the story of a programmer, his entourage, and their day-to-day lives at Microsoft in the '90s. Some funny and nostalgic moments in the pages I read but after a while it just got tedious. So many books, so little time. Sorry Dougie.