I Praise You: Microserfs

Gather round, chitlins, as I tell of the mid-1990s.

I work in an office with people who were, like, twelve during the irrationally exuberant early to mid-1990s, when we used Elm or Pine to check our e-mail and Melrose Place was still on. Now they're bright and shiny 26-year-olds, and I am chronologically eligible for "cougar" according to Urban Dictionary, and we all practically have Feednet. They nod politely and wipe my chin while I dig around fruitlessly for my ringing phone and complain about Newt Gingrich and the second season of Twin Peaks.

So I loaned one of them Microserfs. Like being there, circa 1994.

When I got Microserfs back, I read it again, perhaps for the first time since I was laid off and depressed in 1997 after an intellectual property lawsuit (our team won but was bankrupted), a buyout, and a bad IPO. I was curious to see how it held up ten-some years after.

• In the book, Apple is tottering along, buying out its employees and fretting about the Newton.
  
• Mildly disparaging remarks are made regarding the utility and promise of "the Net" (specifically Usenet) as compared to "the next killer app," yet the book itself is pretty much a blog: epistolary, episodic, intermingling cultural-observational riffs with personal revelation and transformation.
• It's probably a good thing we have evolved some best practices for intermingling cultural-observational riffs with personal revelation and transformation.
• VC guys haven't changed.
• Judging by the spirited conversation I had recently about QWERTY versus Dvorak, geeks haven't changed that much, either.

Comments

[Scandalous Housewife]

You lost me at "Elm or Pine", but "Cougar" and "Melrose Place" I'm all down with!!

[Amber]

Seriously, the first four books Douglas Coupland wrote (Generation X, Shampoo Planet, Life After God and Microserfs) are So.Good. Although I am 27, I really feel like I identify more with people ten years my senior than people my age, probably because I spent my high school years with Douglas Coupland.

I haven't re-read Microserfs yet, but I should to see how it stacks up to the 21st century version, JPod, which I thought was just so-so.

[SMG]

Microserfs is one of my favorite books. (Quite possibly one of the dorkiest phrases ever uttered...er...typed.) I heart it so much that my go-to password for all things intrawebby is some variation of "hellojed." (Shhhh. That's a secret.) Anyway, thrilled to bits that I'm not the only Microserfs geek!

[Georgia]

I just loved this book (although I love anything Mr. Coupland writes). I, too, was just a pre-teen in the early 90's, but I'm a little sister and nostalgic at heart so I loved trying to identify with the characters, which of course was easy because D-Coup* is such an awesome writer.

*I just came up with that!!!**
**I'm also the biggest dork on the planet.

[Isabel]

My husband loves D-Coup (as Georgia would say) and reads and rereads his books all the time. Me, I've never been able to get into them. The only one I've ever read cover to cover was "All Families are Psychotic", which I admit...made me smile.

[lorrie]

love love LOVE that book. :)