Overview

Are you someone who’d use a RAM chip as fertilizer? Do you think that the best way to boot up a computer is with a steel toe? Then The Devouring Fungus is the book for you. Anyone who’s ever had anything to do with computers—from the sophisticated hacker to the confused office worker to the unsuspecting parent who finally relented to the kid’s demand for a PC—will find something here to chuckle about.

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9780393307320

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An Atlanta free-lance writer (The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, etc.) relates the history of the computer through its accumulated folklore - from tales of hackers' derring-do to the origin of the term nerd. Ants farm, Jennings tells us, chimps make tools. . .but only one species tells lies - ah, legends. Legends are the stuff of this lighthearted history of men and their computers, and in the spirit of fun Jennings makes little effort to separete fiction from fact. No matter: More serious tomes may offer a clearer time line from the original room-sized mainframes to tomorrow's laptop, but none entertains like this sit-down comic's routine. Having discovered to her surprise that computer professionals love a good tale as much as anyone, Jennings sent out requests for anecdotes via electronic bulletin board. What she got back were some minor whoppers to sprinkle here and there within a history that begins roughly with Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine; proceeds through the age of hackers ( bright young men of disheveled appearance, often with sunken glowing eyes, as computer guru Joseph Weizenbaum described them); and on to Silicon Valley (where people stop you in the street and ask for a dollar to buy a floppy ). Along the way, viruses cause computers to spew out unexpected messages ( Friar Tuck. . .I am under attack! Pray save me! ); Robert T. Morris, Jr., is arrested for innocently introducing a computer virus into Arpanet; and technofanatics trade horror stories of computers transforming themselves from slave to angry despot. A welcome chapter on compuspeak is also included - an encouragement to readers who dream of helping the mythos grow. This doesn't hold a candle to Steven Levy's more serious Hackers (1984), but it does lay out the techie mythos in an appropriately freewheeling, user-friendly style. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Karla Jennings lives in Decatur, Georgia, where she is working on a novel.

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