I just finished reading The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll this morning (And I highly recommend it!). In the Epilogue, Stoll writes about the Morris worm and briefly mentions:

(Harvard student Paul Graham sent him mail asking for "Any news on the brilliant project")

When I read that, I wondered if that was THE Paul Graham.

Seconding this recommendation. I found a copy, used, at random for 50c. FIFTY CENTS. Easily the greatest enjoyment/price ratio of anything I own.

Have you read his later book, /Silicon Snake Oil/? It's interesting how wrong he ended up being about a lot of things.

Dead wrong about e-commerce and eBooks and good number of other things to boot.

On the other hand: "The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.""

He's partially wrong -- we have online newspapers, online education resources that are better than nothing, and some political action via web-shared activity.

But in spirit, anybody who's been paying attention to journalism is worried about whether we even care to subsidize a healthy fifth estate anymore (or just want more listicles and cable news), even Khan Academy isn't a substitute for a competent teacher, and politics is still driven by the overriding incentives and foibles of human nature.

Some of our new tools/resources are making a bigger difference than others; some are just cosmetic changes.

Stoll has written a lovely 2010 mea culpa:

http://boingboing.net/2010/02/26/curmudgeony-essay-on.html#c...

Quoting:

"Of my many mistakes, flubs, and howlers, few have been as public as my 1995 howler.

Wrong? Yep.

At the time, I was trying to speak against the tide of futuristic commentary on how The Internet Will Solve Our Problems.

Gives me pause. Most of my screwups have had limited publicity: Forgetting my lines in my 4th grade play. Misidentifying a Gilbert and Sullivan song while suddenly drafted to fill in as announcer on a classical radio station. Wasting a week hunting for planets interior to Mercury’s orbit using an infrared system with a noise level so high that it couldn’t possibly detect ‘em. Heck – trying to dry my sneakers in a microwave oven (a quarter century later, there’s still a smudge on the kitchen ceiling)

And, as I’ve laughed at others’ foibles, I think back to some of my own cringeworthy contributions.

Now, whenever I think I know what’s happening, I temper my thoughts: Might be wrong, Cliff…

Warm cheers to all,

-Cliff Stoll on a rainy Friday afternoon in Oakland"

I also second this recommendation. I read this book 5 or 6 years ago and it has not left from my recommendation list [1] since then!

[1] http://pablo.rauzy.name/miscellaneous.html#books