Edited to include more flat foods at the request of an obsessive nerdy friend.

Highly amusing little book of coders all aged 32, mentally if not in years, being obsessed with programming and living their messy student-type lives shaped by this consuming passion.

The idea of flat foods that can be slipped under a door for their more Asperger's type friend who cannot leave his room until all the code is written is funny.
Kraft cheese slices
Fruit leather
Melted icecream (does this count?)
Melba toast
Saltines
Cucumber slices
Pastrami slices
Pizza triangles
Pumpernickel bread
Ok bored now... I'm sure there are a lot more that would be quite sustaining for any obsessive AS coder!

2024 reads, 8/22

“The stock closed up $1.75 on Friday. Bill has 78,000,000 shares, so that means he’s now $136.5 million richer. I have almost no stock, and this means I am a loser.”

The title of this book tells you all you really need to know – Microserfs, a portmanteau of “Microsoft” and the feudal “serfs,” is about a group of programmers working at Microsoft who take the risk and start their own software company. Really, it’s a nineties version of HBO’s Silicon Valley.

This is an epistolary novel, but instead of a diary or letters, narrator Dan Underwood types all his thoughts in a “PowerBook entry,” filled not just with his day-to-day life, but with random notes and emails, complete with typos and grammatical errors to really give it that “draft word document” feel.

“Note: I think Starbucks has patented a new configuration of the water molecule, like in a Kurt Vonnegut novel, or something. This molecule allows their coffee to remain liquid at temperatures over 212° Fahrenheit. How do they get their coffee so hot? It takes hours to cool off—it’s so hot it’s undrinkable—and by the time it’s cool, you’re sick of waiting for it to cool and that ‘coffee moment’ has passed.”

I was born in 1995, so while I obviously cannot relate to these characters, Coupland does an excellent job of immersing you in this era of young programmers through his skillful incorporation of pop culture references. It’s a nice little slice of the nineties, infused with humor, quirkiness, and heartwarming moments.

“Checked the WinQuote: The stock was down 86 cents over the day. That means Bill lost $70 million today, whereas I only lost fuck all. But guess who’ll sleep better?”

Douglas Coupland is one of my favourite authors in the world. His first novel was Generation X, which is actually where that phrase comes from, and in all his books he's got a really unique take on the world. It's not hard to find beauty in nature, which is what a lot of (most?) novelists fall back on when they want to find beauty in the world. Coupland, a Canadian suburban boy, is a product of his time and place, and he seeks to find beauty in the un-idealised world that most of us (or, I should say, most of his readers) actually live in. Is there beauty to be found in neon McDonald's signs, or styrofoam packing peanuts, or Facebook, or microwave pizza boxes? Coupland thinks there is, and he tries as hard as he can to describe it. It's a strange way of looking at the world, but it's refreshing that somebody's out there trying. He's also funny as hell, which helps.

Microserfs is, in my opinion, his masterpiece. For once I feel qualified to have that opinion, because I've read (nearly) everything he's ever done. It's about a bunch of computer programmers working for Microsoft in the early nineties who end up junking the cult of Bill Gates and head down to the Silicon Valley to start their own company. What I love about the book is not the paper-thin plot, though, it's the way that each of these geeks has to settle the same spiritual question: how can I be me, yet still get along in the world.

Everybody, I don't care who they are, has some kind of disconnect between how they see themselves and how they behave in society. From telling your friend you love her new haircut when it actually sucks, to pretending you like your job, to pretending you like your partner, there's a subtle discord at the heart of everybody's life. We all have to compromise who we are to take our place as part of a broader society. I think it's a human thing: it's what lets us have society at all.

So all of the main characters in Microserfs---Dan and Karla and Todd and Susan and Bug Barbecue(!)---are massive geeks. Star Trek trivia litters their conversation. They eat Skittles for dinner, while coding for no overtime pay. And, at the beginning of the book, they all worship Bill Gates. But this leaves them as outsiders in the world, and every one of them is desperately lonely and desperate for meaning. Even as they're writing the computer programs that will rule the world, they're living their lives on the fringes. The drama of the book comes from their attempts to change their status-quo.

The ways they go about trying to integrate themselves into society start out pretty superficial (changing hairstyles/going to the gym/etc.) but turn into a very contemporary spiritual quest. It's a beautiful book about coming to terms with who you are, and hey, that's not something I've ever found easy myself, so it's a perfect fit.

I can imagine some people being put off by the techno-speak that litters the book, but I'm not a computer geek by any stretch of the imagination and it never bothered me. It's also a hilariously spot-on depiction of a very specific time and place, a time and place that is just on the borderland of my memory --- sample sentences: "Fax was like the email of the eighties," and "Speaking of the information superhighway, we have all given each other official permission to administer a beating to whoever uses that accursed term. We're so sick of it!" and "Bug accidentally used the term information superhighway, and so we were able to administer a beating." Did I mention yet that it's also funny as hell? Because it is.

Highly, highly recommended.

Solid 90s tech satire (timed to be read partly while in Seattle). Lots of this remains distressingly accurate. I like the characterizations in this book. They border on absurd but are pretty down to earth in the end.

i just wanted to hang out in the suburban 90s again for a while and this delivered. endlessly quotable, prescient, also surprisingly heartfelt and touching.

In Italia è uscito nel '98 (quando usciva windows 98), il libro è del '95 (quando usciva windows 95), io l'ho letto solo nel 2007 (quando è uscito windows vista, almeno per i comuni mortali).
È troppo fico, ha cambiato il mio modo di vedere le cose. O almeno ha rifertilizzato il mio sguardo. Molto pop, molto tecno-geek (per apprezzarlo appieno bisogna essere programmatori, e di quelli che seguono diversi aspetti dell'informatica da qualche annetto... direi almeno venticinque!), molto post-industriale, molto post-umanista. Per molti aspetti mi ricorda Clerks, il film di Kevin Smith che, guarda caso, è uscito proprio nel '94 (non mi sembra che siano usciti sistemi operativi di Microsoft, in quell'anno: infatti l'aspetto tecno-geek lì manca!); anche se in Microservi non c'è nessuna compiacenza verso il turpiloquio (non che sia da me criticarne l'uso; Kevin Smith lo sa usare, il turpiloquio).
Mi ricorda anche Pattern Recognition (in Italia uscito con un titolo grottescamente fuorviante come L'accademia dei sogni; sigh... sigh! sigghissimo!!!) di William Gibson, dove la peculiarità della protagonista consiste nell'avere una "sensibilità patologica nei confronti dei marchi aziendali" (sto citando pedissequamente il riassunto in copertina: per una volta ci hanno azzeccato). Ve lo consiglio, lo troverete interessante anche se non dovesse piacervi.
Coupland è un genio, Microservi uno dei libri migliori che abbia mai letto. Riesce a invogliarti a dare uno sguardo diverso a qualsiasi cosa. Il mondo si arricchisce di sfumature inedite: il sacchetto di patatine che tieni tra le mani diventa un manufatto sciamanico, il fumetto più sgangherato l'oggetto di culti interspaziali, e i Lego sono i mattoncini con cui dio ha costruito l'universo. Senza menate religiose e/o spiritualiste, intendiamoci.

Mi risulta veramente difficile capire il perchè Feltrinelli si rifiuti di ristampare questo libro che non si trova più nè economico nè costoso. Romanzo su una gerazione di geek (i nerd più cool) che lascia la microsoft per seguire un loro amico che farà un gioco virtuale sulla base del Lego, le loro paranoie e la visione dell'amore ai tempi in cui la rete era poco conosciuta/frequentata e i cellulari ancora meno.
Imperdibile per alcune considerazioni, anche se a volte un po' troppo difficile per tutti i riferimenti agli Stati Uniti del tempo (1993/1995) questo libro è secondo me il passaggio ideale di Coupland da "Girlfriend in a coma" a "JPod" (IMHO il suo capolavoro),perchè non è profondo come il primo e non fa ridere come il secondo, ma ci sono parti di entrambi e cronologicamente ci siamo.

I kind of hated this book. It was dull. It was dull beyond anything I can put into words. I can see somewhere in the mess of randomness that makes up the protagonists journal entries where you'd find seeds of the supposed generation x cultural manifesto this thing is touted as. But since I'm not from that generation perhaps it's lost on me. I'm also not sure why it's still considered such a classic, given that everything in it is a dated time capsule almost entirely irrelevant to the world today. I have read one other of Coupland's works and was equally disappointed. I can't even remember what it was called. That's kind of sad when you think about it. As a Canadian I've read all the reviews of his work that say he has his finger almost always on the pulse of our nations cultural heartbeat. If that's true we really are a land of the living dead because he sure as hell never seems to find mine.

Also, I glanced at some of the other reviews before writing mine. It seems everyone is grasping onto the Captain Crunch scene as the one really well written half paragraph in the whole damn book. One half paragraph does not a classic make. Especially since it references a breakfast cereal which is all but discontinued in many places. Who hasn't had that cut up mouth feeling from a bowl of Captain Crunch? Loads of people, for whom it was not part of their morning childhood routine, that's who.

I picked this up again after 15+ years for the sake of a bit of comfort reading. It has its charms, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I was expecting. The pop philosophy comes across as contrived and naïve, and I didn't really fall in love with the characters this time round. That said, it captures the early-90s tech zeitgeist pretty well, and is a fun novel for programmers, with a few interesting ideas.

What starts out as a chipper, Big Bang Theory-esque circus of geeks unexpectedly reveals itself to be an often mournful novel about the cavernous loneliness that lives deep within the hearts of those who seek to create a technological future that could exist without us.

Technology is now so inextricable from the quotidian- and from the very moment of our birth- that it is easy to forget that the implementation and function of these technologies have been dictated by things as human as ideologies of grievance and the stupidity of the corporate class. Coupland is often hailed as a uniquely prescient harbinger of impending technological dooms, especially after the publication of Generation X, and it’s safe to say that such a clairvoyance is present here as well, particularly when he talks about work’s remit beginning to invade the private and personal life (hello 6pm texts from my boss!). In this, it’s so interesting to get a glimpse of what life was like as the different skeins of the modern technological world were still being developed, even ideated, and to feel the tension of those pullulating possibilities.

A criticism that I see levelled against this book on here is that Dan is an unexciting narrator. But, in Coupland’s portrayal of Dan as a QA Tester of unexceptional ability and meso-nerd interpersonal skills, I think that it’s perfectly realistic. He sometimes fumbles as a narrator and crosses from the mundane to the sensitive or personal rather hastily, but what techie do you know that doesn’t have some kind of literary hamstring? In this, I think the vulnerability and honesty in the book is endearing, and I’m very glad to have read it.

Los nerds consiguen lo que quieren cuando lo quieren y se ponen histéricos si no lo logran en el acto.
Son capaces de obsesionarse muchísimo. Supongo que ése es el problema. Aunque precisamente esta capacidad de concentración la que hace que sean tan buenos programando: una solo línea cada vez, una línea tras otra en una sucesión de millones de líneas.

Qué puedo decir de Microsiervos, además que es un libro gordo muy entretenido porque habla de nerds y geeks, peores que yo, que es una obra ubicada en Seattle y California de 1993 a 1994 y que cuenta por medio de una diario (lo que hoy se conoce como un blog) los pormenores de una pandilla de raros y solos y autistas que programan y programan y programan por disciplina y porque no saben hacer otra cosa productiva en la vida.

Vivo mi vida día a día, una línea tras otra de programa sin errores

Claro, son 20 años de diferencia, de tiempo transcurrido, y no importa, porque lo que describe Douglas Coupland se puede ver en el Valle de Aburrá, por ejemplo, donde que todos mis amigos o conocidos, están apostándole al código como poesía y como trabajo, y nos arriesgamos a crear empresas de videos, multimedias, y servicios web.

En los Ángeles, todo el mundo está escribiendo un guión. En New York, todo el mundo está escribiendo una novela. En San Francisco, todo el mundo esta desarrollando un producto multimedia

Obvio, no es lo mismo ser esclavo para Microsoft y vivir en Silicon Valley que en Medellín, pero el frikismo es el mismo. Y a veces más. Por eso a cada pagina el libro me gustaba más, porque el uso de la cotidianidad vacía y repetitiva y hasta absurda de los gustos y acciones de la generación que vivimos de los computadores, es poesía de la desesperanza humana y al mismo tiempo la muestra que somos una especie de materia que se ha inventado un banco de información intangible que ha avanzado la humanidad como nunca es su cochina existencia.

Se mire como se mire, las máquinas son nuestro inconsciente. Me refiero a que no llegaron seres del espacio exterior a la tierra y nos hicieron máquinas... las hemos hecho nosotros. De modo que las máquinas solo pueden ser producto de nuestro ser y, como tales, ventanas a nuestras almas... si examinamos las máquinas que construimos y la clase de cosas que metemos en ellas, tenemos un dato único y fiable de cómo estamos evolucionando.

Douglas Coupland es un profeta. Y cuando digo profeta quiero decir un descifrador del futuro observando muy bien el incoloro y aburrido presente de los parques tecnológicos y de los garajes de los emprendedores.

La @ podría convertirse en el “Mc” o el “Mac” del próximo milenio.

No es profecía que anuncia terremotos, porque no se puede, porque no se ven, porque todo los cambios revolucionarios que los computadores provocaban hace 20 años, y hoy, son internos de cada ser y cada individuo y que cada uno los toma y los armoniza con sus tradiciones, y el resultado es lo que estamos viviendo en el mundo de multiconectado de hoy.

Los ordenadores te enseñan algo importante, y es que no tiene sentido recordarlo todo. Lo importante es ser capaz de encontrar cosas.

Por último, es una obra literaria muy divertida, llena de humor. De humor negro, geek, de nerds, pero humor al fin y al cabo. Ya quiero leerme el resto de libros de Coupland!

A la gente que no tiene vida propia le gusta juntarse con otros que tampoco tienen vida propia. Así forman vidas.

Love it.