What do you think?
Rate this book
Hard Drive
No one at Artelligence would listen to the warnings of one compute programmer. No one believed a simple virus could infect their revolutionary Master Voice program. No one conceived the possibility of global infection -- mutating, reproducing, tainting every financial and military computer system it touched. . .
Until it was too late.
Tense, gripping, and all too possible, Hard Drive is a novel for our times. Author David Pogue, Contributing Editor to Macworld, creates a shattering race between man and machine, a chilling scenario in which millions of dollars -- and countless human lives -- can be lost in the single pulse of a microchip.
Until it was too late.
Tense, gripping, and all too possible, Hard Drive is a novel for our times. Author David Pogue, Contributing Editor to Macworld, creates a shattering race between man and machine, a chilling scenario in which millions of dollars -- and countless human lives -- can be lost in the single pulse of a microchip.
288 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published April 1, 1993
1 person is currently reading
48 people want to read
About the author
David Pogue
227 books92 followersDavid Pogue, Yale '85, is the weekly personal-technology columnist for the New York Times and an Emmy award-winning tech correspondent for CBS News. His funny tech videos appear weekly on CNBC. And with 3 million books in print, he is also one of the world's bestselling how- to authors. He wrote or co-wrote seven books in the "For Dummies" series (including Macs, Magic, Opera, and Classical Music). In 1999, he launched his own series of amusing, practical, and user-friendly computer books called Missing Manuals, which now includes 100 titles.
David and his wife, Jennifer Pogue, MD, live in Connecticut with their three young children.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 7, 2021
Danny Cooper has had enough of life in New York. Working as a freelance computing consultant hasn't exactly given him the fame and fortune he had hoped for with a technology gig, so when he saw the job offer from Artelligence seeking programmers for a four-month employment stint, Danny threw caution to the wind, applied, and got the job.
Now a bonafide (if temporary) Macintosh code monkey in Santa Clara, California, Danny has been attached to an exciting project involving voice recognition software. Long considered the holy grail of interaction thanks to Star Trek, the ability to tell a computer what to do by literally telling it what to do will guarantee the first company who gets it right will be set for life. Danny and his team want very badly to ship their Master Voice software on time, because it will mean beating Artelligence's competition, Huntington Systems, to market. There should be nothing to worry about on that front, since heading up the project is programming wunderkind Gam Lampert, a guy who eats, sleeps, and breathes Assembly code.
In fact, Danny's team is so good at their job that Master Voice is ready to ship well before its target date. Things couldn't be better...until Gam dies in a mysterious plane crash, and the Artelligence team uncovers a virus hidden within the Master Voice core program, which is primed to go live in just a few weeks' time. Impervious to detection, hardened against removal, the virus has one purpose: to obliterate the files of any system upon which Master Voice is installed. With their top programmer dead and all the files on his personal computer locked down behind layers of impenetrable security, Danny and his team have no choice but to slog through the source code to document everything in hopes they can learn enough about how the virus slipped in and issue a fix. If they don't, the results will be ruinous to tens of thousands of interconnected computers -- and their users, and their data -- across the globe.
* * * * *
As someone who's been computer-literate for most of his life thanks to early exposure to a TRS-80 and a burning curiosity to learn everything about the magic machines, reading techno-thrillers from the 80's and 90's is a mixed bag. Most of the time, it's obvious the writer has no idea what computers of the day are actually capable of, but just uses them to tell the story they want. This is how you get stories where games with photo-realistic graphics and fully-rendered 3D backgrounds come on single floppy disks, multi-megabyte file transfers via dial-up modem happen in seconds not hours, and streetwise homicide detectives can also be multi-millionaire video game programmers in their off-hours.
I'm not saying these mistakes make the books impossible to enjoy, but if you know more than the writer, nothing pulls you out of that willing suspensions of disbelief faster than running across obvious nonsense. I'm willing to overlook nonsense if the writing is good enough or the story is compelling enough, but wouldn't it be nice to have the best of both worlds?
Because of this, seeing David Pogue's name on the cover of this book got me instantly interested. Pogue's spent the last thirty-some years immersed in the world of computers and technology: the guy's written a slew of non-fiction computer books, edited Macworld magazine, and currently serves as a technology editor and writer for The New York Times newspaper. In short, this is a guy who, even in 1993, knew both the limitations of the computers of the day, and also how to string words into coherent sentences. He's made a career out of explaining complicated computing issues to the non-computer-literate. If anybody can pull off a techno-thriller without botching the "techno-" part, it's got to be this guy, right?
Thankfully, yes -- with one caveat I'll get to in a bit.
Hard Drive is a competently-written, if rather basic, thriller. It's far, far less complicated than its contemporaries, so if your idea of great fun is the political intrigue of Tom Clancy, or the military explosiveness of Dale Brown, or the international espionage antics of Robert Ludlum, then Hard Drive's 288 pages are likely to disappoint. There are neither attache cases nor gunfire exchanged within its pages (although there is an unintentional missile strike towards the end).
Instead, Pogue's narrative comes from a desk jockey perspective. What if you had to stop a computer virus which you knew nothing about, that was already in the wild, and you had to distribute a fix for this virus to tens of thousands of people all over the United States, or even the world? What's more, how do you come to grips that something you or your co-workers did was responsible for the mess? That's the tactic Pogue's working with here. No International Men of Mystery, no CIA, no MI5, just a group of computer nerds trying to fix a mess before the window of opportunity closes.
It's a techno-thriller written for glasses-wearing nerds like me, and while it didn't set my hair on fire (and won't set yours on fire either), I had a good time with it.
So, about that caveat...
Hard Drive is set in 1993, the year of its publication. This year is, literally, the best year in Apple's personal computer history, where the Macintosh achieved its single highest percentage of market penetration ever. And David Pogue has always been one of Apple's most fervent evangelists, so it's unsurprising he put the Macintosh computer at the forefront of his techno-thriller.
The problem is that, even in 1993, at the height of Apple's market share, the Macintosh in all of its various incarnations and models accounted for only 12% of the personal computers in use across the world.
I hope you can see where I'm going with this, because there's being a cockeyed optimist, then there's carrying a joke way too far, and Pogue definitely falls into the latter camp. Apple, for all its success as a company and all its innovations, has always been a niche player. The idea that businesses, industries, and governments all over the world were using Macs is to keep the lights on is simply laughable to anyone who knows better.
To Pogue's credit, he attempts to bridge this gap by postulating a second piece of software, "Cross Over", which is basically a Mac emulator written for Unix machines, that allows the virus within Master Voice to "jump species" into systems where it ordinarily would be meaningless. But while programs like this do exist, they run in a "virtual" environment, meaning they only have access to the files necessary to their operation -- the worst that could happen to a Unix machine with Cross Over installed is that the "Master Voice" program or other applications within the virtual Macintosh environment get wiped out. The system files themselves would be unaffected, because there's no way for a Mac virus to identify a Unix filesystem outside of that environment.
Anyone who has messed with console emulation before understands this. Could somebody implant a virus in a ROM file? Sure. Would it do anything except muck up the virtual environment created by the emulator until the program was either shut down or (at the VERY worst) re-installed? Nope. Sorry. A virus, trojan horse, or other malware just doesn't work that way (especially in the 90's), no matter how much Pogue wants it to.
I get that in a techno-thriller the stakes have to be high, but then Pogue's story would have been far more plausible if he'd focused on the IBM PC market and its various clones/offshoots like Compaq, Gateway, and the like, or had the virus target Unix machines, which could have brought the entire internet of the early 90's to its knees. I imagine such a thing would have killed a Mac evangelist like Pogue, who was likely far more familiar with Apple's tech, and it's irrelevant to anyone who doesn't understand the fundamentals of operating systems, but to anyone even remotely computer-literate, this sticks out like a bent pin on a male serial port connector.
But as long as you can overlook Pogue's desire to deep-throat Apple's line of personal computers and over-extend their capabilities and importance to the world by an order of magnitude, what you'll find here is a short, competently-written, easily-enjoyed little thriller. There aren't really any twists and turns, the stakes never feel very high even when Pogue wafts in a bit of political intrigue with the death of a foreign ambassador due to the virus's infestation of American hospital equipment, but the main characters are a nice rogue's gallery of lovable kooks, geeks, and nerds who can explain computer stuff to other characters (and thus, the reader) without talking down to them.
If you're a forty-something tech nerd like myself, and you're interested in computer-themed novels set in the time just before the internet became a household word, where online communication was almost entirely done via BBS, and paid for at exorbitant hourly rates, then Hard Drive is a fine way to kill a few hours while reminiscing about a fascinating period of the hobby's history. Though out of print for decades, copies are easily obtainable for a few dollars pretty much anywhere books are sold online.
3 reminders to practice safe hex out of 5.
Now a bonafide (if temporary) Macintosh code monkey in Santa Clara, California, Danny has been attached to an exciting project involving voice recognition software. Long considered the holy grail of interaction thanks to Star Trek, the ability to tell a computer what to do by literally telling it what to do will guarantee the first company who gets it right will be set for life. Danny and his team want very badly to ship their Master Voice software on time, because it will mean beating Artelligence's competition, Huntington Systems, to market. There should be nothing to worry about on that front, since heading up the project is programming wunderkind Gam Lampert, a guy who eats, sleeps, and breathes Assembly code.
In fact, Danny's team is so good at their job that Master Voice is ready to ship well before its target date. Things couldn't be better...until Gam dies in a mysterious plane crash, and the Artelligence team uncovers a virus hidden within the Master Voice core program, which is primed to go live in just a few weeks' time. Impervious to detection, hardened against removal, the virus has one purpose: to obliterate the files of any system upon which Master Voice is installed. With their top programmer dead and all the files on his personal computer locked down behind layers of impenetrable security, Danny and his team have no choice but to slog through the source code to document everything in hopes they can learn enough about how the virus slipped in and issue a fix. If they don't, the results will be ruinous to tens of thousands of interconnected computers -- and their users, and their data -- across the globe.
* * * * *
As someone who's been computer-literate for most of his life thanks to early exposure to a TRS-80 and a burning curiosity to learn everything about the magic machines, reading techno-thrillers from the 80's and 90's is a mixed bag. Most of the time, it's obvious the writer has no idea what computers of the day are actually capable of, but just uses them to tell the story they want. This is how you get stories where games with photo-realistic graphics and fully-rendered 3D backgrounds come on single floppy disks, multi-megabyte file transfers via dial-up modem happen in seconds not hours, and streetwise homicide detectives can also be multi-millionaire video game programmers in their off-hours.
I'm not saying these mistakes make the books impossible to enjoy, but if you know more than the writer, nothing pulls you out of that willing suspensions of disbelief faster than running across obvious nonsense. I'm willing to overlook nonsense if the writing is good enough or the story is compelling enough, but wouldn't it be nice to have the best of both worlds?
Because of this, seeing David Pogue's name on the cover of this book got me instantly interested. Pogue's spent the last thirty-some years immersed in the world of computers and technology: the guy's written a slew of non-fiction computer books, edited Macworld magazine, and currently serves as a technology editor and writer for The New York Times newspaper. In short, this is a guy who, even in 1993, knew both the limitations of the computers of the day, and also how to string words into coherent sentences. He's made a career out of explaining complicated computing issues to the non-computer-literate. If anybody can pull off a techno-thriller without botching the "techno-" part, it's got to be this guy, right?
Thankfully, yes -- with one caveat I'll get to in a bit.
Hard Drive is a competently-written, if rather basic, thriller. It's far, far less complicated than its contemporaries, so if your idea of great fun is the political intrigue of Tom Clancy, or the military explosiveness of Dale Brown, or the international espionage antics of Robert Ludlum, then Hard Drive's 288 pages are likely to disappoint. There are neither attache cases nor gunfire exchanged within its pages (although there is an unintentional missile strike towards the end).
Instead, Pogue's narrative comes from a desk jockey perspective. What if you had to stop a computer virus which you knew nothing about, that was already in the wild, and you had to distribute a fix for this virus to tens of thousands of people all over the United States, or even the world? What's more, how do you come to grips that something you or your co-workers did was responsible for the mess? That's the tactic Pogue's working with here. No International Men of Mystery, no CIA, no MI5, just a group of computer nerds trying to fix a mess before the window of opportunity closes.
It's a techno-thriller written for glasses-wearing nerds like me, and while it didn't set my hair on fire (and won't set yours on fire either), I had a good time with it.
So, about that caveat...
Hard Drive is set in 1993, the year of its publication. This year is, literally, the best year in Apple's personal computer history, where the Macintosh achieved its single highest percentage of market penetration ever. And David Pogue has always been one of Apple's most fervent evangelists, so it's unsurprising he put the Macintosh computer at the forefront of his techno-thriller.
The problem is that, even in 1993, at the height of Apple's market share, the Macintosh in all of its various incarnations and models accounted for only 12% of the personal computers in use across the world.
I hope you can see where I'm going with this, because there's being a cockeyed optimist, then there's carrying a joke way too far, and Pogue definitely falls into the latter camp. Apple, for all its success as a company and all its innovations, has always been a niche player. The idea that businesses, industries, and governments all over the world were using Macs is to keep the lights on is simply laughable to anyone who knows better.
To Pogue's credit, he attempts to bridge this gap by postulating a second piece of software, "Cross Over", which is basically a Mac emulator written for Unix machines, that allows the virus within Master Voice to "jump species" into systems where it ordinarily would be meaningless. But while programs like this do exist, they run in a "virtual" environment, meaning they only have access to the files necessary to their operation -- the worst that could happen to a Unix machine with Cross Over installed is that the "Master Voice" program or other applications within the virtual Macintosh environment get wiped out. The system files themselves would be unaffected, because there's no way for a Mac virus to identify a Unix filesystem outside of that environment.
Anyone who has messed with console emulation before understands this. Could somebody implant a virus in a ROM file? Sure. Would it do anything except muck up the virtual environment created by the emulator until the program was either shut down or (at the VERY worst) re-installed? Nope. Sorry. A virus, trojan horse, or other malware just doesn't work that way (especially in the 90's), no matter how much Pogue wants it to.
I get that in a techno-thriller the stakes have to be high, but then Pogue's story would have been far more plausible if he'd focused on the IBM PC market and its various clones/offshoots like Compaq, Gateway, and the like, or had the virus target Unix machines, which could have brought the entire internet of the early 90's to its knees. I imagine such a thing would have killed a Mac evangelist like Pogue, who was likely far more familiar with Apple's tech, and it's irrelevant to anyone who doesn't understand the fundamentals of operating systems, but to anyone even remotely computer-literate, this sticks out like a bent pin on a male serial port connector.
But as long as you can overlook Pogue's desire to deep-throat Apple's line of personal computers and over-extend their capabilities and importance to the world by an order of magnitude, what you'll find here is a short, competently-written, easily-enjoyed little thriller. There aren't really any twists and turns, the stakes never feel very high even when Pogue wafts in a bit of political intrigue with the death of a foreign ambassador due to the virus's infestation of American hospital equipment, but the main characters are a nice rogue's gallery of lovable kooks, geeks, and nerds who can explain computer stuff to other characters (and thus, the reader) without talking down to them.
If you're a forty-something tech nerd like myself, and you're interested in computer-themed novels set in the time just before the internet became a household word, where online communication was almost entirely done via BBS, and paid for at exorbitant hourly rates, then Hard Drive is a fine way to kill a few hours while reminiscing about a fascinating period of the hobby's history. Though out of print for decades, copies are easily obtainable for a few dollars pretty much anywhere books are sold online.
3 reminders to practice safe hex out of 5.
May 20, 2022
Dated in nearly every way, and I wouldn't recommend it to people, but I enjoyed reading a fiction story about computer viruses set in 1993.
December 14, 2025
review of
David Pogue's Hard Drive
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 14, 2025
I wasn't familiar w/ this author but the cover of this bk screams of targetted-at-a-New-York-Times-bestseller-demographic. &, yeah, it's written in a generic techno-thriller style - but I enjoyed it! Looking at info about the author online I found that he's written quite a few bks, mostly technology & how-to. This is his only novel for adults, there's one other novel for middle-schoolers. Having come of age in the midst of a revolution that rejected "suits" & "straights" as representatives of an 'entitled' oppressive death culture, this clean-cut, obviously well-to-do, author-in-a-suit really isn't my kind of guy.. but I still enjoyed the bk.
A small, but growing, computer company is developing technology that'll make them very successful. They have Japenese investors. A spokesperson for the company makes a speech to them:
""As you know, Master Voice is the most important, most dramatic new computer product in the history of personal computers. I mean, think of it: true speech recognition. I kid you not, gentlemen, it will be like nothing the world has seen before. People will speak into a microphone, and the computer will type out what they say, word for word, with better than 90 percent accuracy. Or people will control their computers: 'Print my thesis!' they'll say. 'Sort my Rolodex!' Trust me. One day you'll view your financial involvement with us as the best investment you ever made."" - pp 5-6
The investors believe that the product will be successful, if the company can produce it - so they give the company a hard deadline or they'll withdraw their money - wch will be disastrous.
This bk was copyrighted 1993. That's fortunate for me b/c it means that I can adequately understand the technology referred to - something I wdn't stand much of a chance at if it were more current. I'm not moaning at my lack of current technology understanding, I'm somewhat sick of the emphasis on tech, even tho I use it every day.
One of the protagonists of the story is Danny. He's developed an anti-virus utility that he hasn't been able to sell or otherwise market. His virus knowledge comes in handy when he gets hired as a crunch-time employee for Master Voice.
"The disk contained Danny's masterpiece: a little utility program he'd written himself that checked for computer viruses. He'd named it SURvIVor, hoping people would get the spelled-backward joke. It was a pretty good program, actually. If a virus made its way into your system, SURvIVor would beep like crazy, alerting you to the fact that youwere being invaded. Once you knew you had a virus, SURVIVor's Cleanse command could even clean it out for you." - p 12
"Of course, it was only the biggest, most popular dial-up computer network/database in the universe. She could send and receive electronic mail (E-mail, Mike O'Massey called it)" - p 28
E-mail! It's funny to think of when e-mail was this new. My 1st email was probably under the name of Luther Blissett & was in 1996. I didn't even have a computer capable of dial-up (vvveeeerrrrryyyyy slow & primitive by today's standards) so I had to check & send my emails at the public library. This reference to e-mail is from 3 yrs before I was using it.
Danny's at his new job:
"Each cubicle was equipped with a Mac IIvx—not top of the line, but powerful enough. Each was equipped with eight megabytes of memory—plenty of RAM—and a 265-megabyte external hard drive. Well, that ought to hold a few files, Danny thought. Like the whole Library of Congress." - p 31
Ha ha! My 1st home computer was a Mac SE (probably) given to me by James Mansback "Sarmad" Brody in the fall of 1994. In those days, files were in the kilobytes. I might not even had had a megabyte of storage. These days, I have over 200TB of storage & I go thru 20TB or so in a yr or less.
"He let the drone of the TV enter his consciousness.
""And so the United States has found itself in an unlikely position: an ally to the rebellious Ukraine. If Masso and Unkrainian president Jurenko have their way, the American plan just might help the fighting Commonwealth states truly . . . become a union once again, Jeannie Spinks, CNN, Moscow."" - p 48
I have no memory of what was going on w/ Ukraine & the US in 1993ish. SO, this became a sortof prediction of 30 yrs later when Russia's trying to reestablish its empire thru an imperialism I can only hope fails miserably. See my relevant article here: https://medium.com/@idioideo/what-am-... if you can access it w/o paying.
Of course, Danny has a love interest, Michelle, & michelle has a turtle.
"Myrtle, evidently bored by the proceedings, half receded into her shell. Michelle lifted her gently by the edges and put her back inside the terrarium.
""Technically, poor Myrtle is contraband," she told Danny. "Pet stores in this country aren't allowed to sell turtles anymore, did you know that? But I got Myrtle from the lady who used to have my apartment, and that was two years ago. Myrtle has already outlived her life expectancy in captivity by a year; I think she and I were meant to be together."" - p 52
When I was a kid, walking in the nearby woods, seeing turtles was common. Sometimes kids wd paint a mark on their top so that they'd know if they were seeing the same turtle again. I saw a turtle recently for the 1st time in what seems like 50 yrs. I didn't know that selling them in pet stores has been illegal for so long but I'm glad it is. What a strange world we live in where an animal can be endangered b/c it's slow to cross a road & its natural protection, its shell, is inadequate against the weight of a car.
"Nonetheless, Stroman had decided to treat the U.S. government like any other Artelligence customer. Stroman would sell them the product; it wouldn't be his responsibility to monitor what they did with it. If he started worrying about the ultimate reason for his presence in these hallways, he'd probably back right out of the deal out of sheer guilt; finding better and faster ways of killing people wasn't quite his cup of tea." - p 55
Typical. I remember being at a party talking w/ a guy who was working in robotics. He was quick to inform me that he 'didn't know what was going to be done with his work.' Now, of course he knew it was being used for military purposes, ulrimately for killing people, or he wdn't have been so quick to deny such knowledge - but the denial enabled him to have a clean(ish) conscience. I worked for a medical lab where the 2 owners were approached by the US military & asked to do anthrax research. The owners declined. The lab was bought shortly thereafter & the owners were kept on as consultants. Then they were let go. Gee, I wonder if the lab started doing anthrax research after that?
Artelligence was under attack by industrial sabotage meant to destroy Master Voice from a bitter competitor. They didn't figure out what was going on until massive damage had been done.
"There are four ways a virus can infect a computer. First, it can be accidentally sent along with legitimate data over the phone wires, if the computer is equipped with a modem (telephone hookup). Second, the virus may enter through the SCSI port on the back of the computer. This small computer serial interface port is usually used for connecting an external hard drive; if such a drive is infected, then any other disks on the computer also become infected.
"Third, a computer may be infected by other computers, if they are linked together into a network. And finally, a virus may arrive at a computer aboard s floppy disk. As soon as the disk is slipped into the disk drive , any hard drives (or other computers) attached to the computer are at risk." - p 83
Things have developed considerably since then. AI Overview provides this: "AOL has faced lawsuits regarding scareware, most notably a significant class-action settlement in 2013 for $8.5 million with Support.com and other defendants over deceptive "Computer Checkup" scareware that falsely warned users of serious computer issues to sell unnecessary fixes, a practice similar to broader FTC actions against scareware marketers. While AOL itself wasn't always the primary scareware creator, they faced lawsuits for facilitating these deceptive practices through their platform, leading to settlements for user harm." It's not uncommon for such lawsuits to have a clause that states that the company can't be sued again for the same crime. After the above-mentioned lawsuit, Verizon sold their emails to AOL, that included mine. As soon as I was involuntarily switched over to AOL I became deluged w/ scareware. Many yrs later, it's lessened but it's never stopped.
Michelle works in PR for Artelligence & she's trying desperately to meet the deadlin that's been set by the Japanese investors.
"January 13, 1994 "You, sir, are a man of your word," Michelle said. It took every ounce of her self-control not to puke at having to play the cute blond PR chick.
"It was working, though. The guy was utterly hromone driven, with about as much brains as a grapefruit. His name was Ringo, of course.
""Hey, hey, I say I'm gonne get the job done, I get it done, you know what I'm saying? Doll like you comes in here, I says to myself, I says, Whoa! Now there's someone with class, you know what I'm saying? There's a fine classy lady who deserves to be treated right.["]" - p 156
I'm not sure I've ever been present at such an interaction. The implication seems to be that some low-life male wants to elevate his class status by getting his penis into one of his attractive superiors. That seems like something out of a 70s movie. I'm sure it's happened in 'real life' too but I have to wonder whether it's exaggerated here in order to insult people that the author considers beneath his station.
""If this thing crawls into the UNIX and mainframe world," Skinner volunteered, "it could get onto the InterNet!"
"Danny shot an explanatory glance at Michelle. "InterNet is the phone network that connects every mainframe in the United States. Like the national highway system, except it's made of phone lines. Every corporation, branch of government, and satellite hooks into the InterNet."" - p 190
It's possible that the majority of the people reading this review will have been born into a world where the InterNet already existed & was taken for granted. Of course, such people know it wasn't always like that but this gives a little taste into earlier times. Why, for me, it feels like I'm still wiping the InterNet's butt! Okay, okay, I cdn't resist the expression.
All in all, this gave me everything I hope for a techno-thriller. Why, people even got murdered! Do you find yrself shaking if you go a day w/o a murder in pop culture?!
David Pogue's Hard Drive
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 14, 2025
I wasn't familiar w/ this author but the cover of this bk screams of targetted-at-a-New-York-Times-bestseller-demographic. &, yeah, it's written in a generic techno-thriller style - but I enjoyed it! Looking at info about the author online I found that he's written quite a few bks, mostly technology & how-to. This is his only novel for adults, there's one other novel for middle-schoolers. Having come of age in the midst of a revolution that rejected "suits" & "straights" as representatives of an 'entitled' oppressive death culture, this clean-cut, obviously well-to-do, author-in-a-suit really isn't my kind of guy.. but I still enjoyed the bk.
A small, but growing, computer company is developing technology that'll make them very successful. They have Japenese investors. A spokesperson for the company makes a speech to them:
""As you know, Master Voice is the most important, most dramatic new computer product in the history of personal computers. I mean, think of it: true speech recognition. I kid you not, gentlemen, it will be like nothing the world has seen before. People will speak into a microphone, and the computer will type out what they say, word for word, with better than 90 percent accuracy. Or people will control their computers: 'Print my thesis!' they'll say. 'Sort my Rolodex!' Trust me. One day you'll view your financial involvement with us as the best investment you ever made."" - pp 5-6
The investors believe that the product will be successful, if the company can produce it - so they give the company a hard deadline or they'll withdraw their money - wch will be disastrous.
This bk was copyrighted 1993. That's fortunate for me b/c it means that I can adequately understand the technology referred to - something I wdn't stand much of a chance at if it were more current. I'm not moaning at my lack of current technology understanding, I'm somewhat sick of the emphasis on tech, even tho I use it every day.
One of the protagonists of the story is Danny. He's developed an anti-virus utility that he hasn't been able to sell or otherwise market. His virus knowledge comes in handy when he gets hired as a crunch-time employee for Master Voice.
"The disk contained Danny's masterpiece: a little utility program he'd written himself that checked for computer viruses. He'd named it SURvIVor, hoping people would get the spelled-backward joke. It was a pretty good program, actually. If a virus made its way into your system, SURvIVor would beep like crazy, alerting you to the fact that youwere being invaded. Once you knew you had a virus, SURVIVor's Cleanse command could even clean it out for you." - p 12
"Of course, it was only the biggest, most popular dial-up computer network/database in the universe. She could send and receive electronic mail (E-mail, Mike O'Massey called it)" - p 28
E-mail! It's funny to think of when e-mail was this new. My 1st email was probably under the name of Luther Blissett & was in 1996. I didn't even have a computer capable of dial-up (vvveeeerrrrryyyyy slow & primitive by today's standards) so I had to check & send my emails at the public library. This reference to e-mail is from 3 yrs before I was using it.
Danny's at his new job:
"Each cubicle was equipped with a Mac IIvx—not top of the line, but powerful enough. Each was equipped with eight megabytes of memory—plenty of RAM—and a 265-megabyte external hard drive. Well, that ought to hold a few files, Danny thought. Like the whole Library of Congress." - p 31
Ha ha! My 1st home computer was a Mac SE (probably) given to me by James Mansback "Sarmad" Brody in the fall of 1994. In those days, files were in the kilobytes. I might not even had had a megabyte of storage. These days, I have over 200TB of storage & I go thru 20TB or so in a yr or less.
"He let the drone of the TV enter his consciousness.
""And so the United States has found itself in an unlikely position: an ally to the rebellious Ukraine. If Masso and Unkrainian president Jurenko have their way, the American plan just might help the fighting Commonwealth states truly . . . become a union once again, Jeannie Spinks, CNN, Moscow."" - p 48
I have no memory of what was going on w/ Ukraine & the US in 1993ish. SO, this became a sortof prediction of 30 yrs later when Russia's trying to reestablish its empire thru an imperialism I can only hope fails miserably. See my relevant article here: https://medium.com/@idioideo/what-am-... if you can access it w/o paying.
Of course, Danny has a love interest, Michelle, & michelle has a turtle.
"Myrtle, evidently bored by the proceedings, half receded into her shell. Michelle lifted her gently by the edges and put her back inside the terrarium.
""Technically, poor Myrtle is contraband," she told Danny. "Pet stores in this country aren't allowed to sell turtles anymore, did you know that? But I got Myrtle from the lady who used to have my apartment, and that was two years ago. Myrtle has already outlived her life expectancy in captivity by a year; I think she and I were meant to be together."" - p 52
When I was a kid, walking in the nearby woods, seeing turtles was common. Sometimes kids wd paint a mark on their top so that they'd know if they were seeing the same turtle again. I saw a turtle recently for the 1st time in what seems like 50 yrs. I didn't know that selling them in pet stores has been illegal for so long but I'm glad it is. What a strange world we live in where an animal can be endangered b/c it's slow to cross a road & its natural protection, its shell, is inadequate against the weight of a car.
"Nonetheless, Stroman had decided to treat the U.S. government like any other Artelligence customer. Stroman would sell them the product; it wouldn't be his responsibility to monitor what they did with it. If he started worrying about the ultimate reason for his presence in these hallways, he'd probably back right out of the deal out of sheer guilt; finding better and faster ways of killing people wasn't quite his cup of tea." - p 55
Typical. I remember being at a party talking w/ a guy who was working in robotics. He was quick to inform me that he 'didn't know what was going to be done with his work.' Now, of course he knew it was being used for military purposes, ulrimately for killing people, or he wdn't have been so quick to deny such knowledge - but the denial enabled him to have a clean(ish) conscience. I worked for a medical lab where the 2 owners were approached by the US military & asked to do anthrax research. The owners declined. The lab was bought shortly thereafter & the owners were kept on as consultants. Then they were let go. Gee, I wonder if the lab started doing anthrax research after that?
Artelligence was under attack by industrial sabotage meant to destroy Master Voice from a bitter competitor. They didn't figure out what was going on until massive damage had been done.
"There are four ways a virus can infect a computer. First, it can be accidentally sent along with legitimate data over the phone wires, if the computer is equipped with a modem (telephone hookup). Second, the virus may enter through the SCSI port on the back of the computer. This small computer serial interface port is usually used for connecting an external hard drive; if such a drive is infected, then any other disks on the computer also become infected.
"Third, a computer may be infected by other computers, if they are linked together into a network. And finally, a virus may arrive at a computer aboard s floppy disk. As soon as the disk is slipped into the disk drive , any hard drives (or other computers) attached to the computer are at risk." - p 83
Things have developed considerably since then. AI Overview provides this: "AOL has faced lawsuits regarding scareware, most notably a significant class-action settlement in 2013 for $8.5 million with Support.com and other defendants over deceptive "Computer Checkup" scareware that falsely warned users of serious computer issues to sell unnecessary fixes, a practice similar to broader FTC actions against scareware marketers. While AOL itself wasn't always the primary scareware creator, they faced lawsuits for facilitating these deceptive practices through their platform, leading to settlements for user harm." It's not uncommon for such lawsuits to have a clause that states that the company can't be sued again for the same crime. After the above-mentioned lawsuit, Verizon sold their emails to AOL, that included mine. As soon as I was involuntarily switched over to AOL I became deluged w/ scareware. Many yrs later, it's lessened but it's never stopped.
Michelle works in PR for Artelligence & she's trying desperately to meet the deadlin that's been set by the Japanese investors.
"January 13, 1994 "You, sir, are a man of your word," Michelle said. It took every ounce of her self-control not to puke at having to play the cute blond PR chick.
"It was working, though. The guy was utterly hromone driven, with about as much brains as a grapefruit. His name was Ringo, of course.
""Hey, hey, I say I'm gonne get the job done, I get it done, you know what I'm saying? Doll like you comes in here, I says to myself, I says, Whoa! Now there's someone with class, you know what I'm saying? There's a fine classy lady who deserves to be treated right.["]" - p 156
I'm not sure I've ever been present at such an interaction. The implication seems to be that some low-life male wants to elevate his class status by getting his penis into one of his attractive superiors. That seems like something out of a 70s movie. I'm sure it's happened in 'real life' too but I have to wonder whether it's exaggerated here in order to insult people that the author considers beneath his station.
""If this thing crawls into the UNIX and mainframe world," Skinner volunteered, "it could get onto the InterNet!"
"Danny shot an explanatory glance at Michelle. "InterNet is the phone network that connects every mainframe in the United States. Like the national highway system, except it's made of phone lines. Every corporation, branch of government, and satellite hooks into the InterNet."" - p 190
It's possible that the majority of the people reading this review will have been born into a world where the InterNet already existed & was taken for granted. Of course, such people know it wasn't always like that but this gives a little taste into earlier times. Why, for me, it feels like I'm still wiping the InterNet's butt! Okay, okay, I cdn't resist the expression.
All in all, this gave me everything I hope for a techno-thriller. Why, people even got murdered! Do you find yrself shaking if you go a day w/o a murder in pop culture?!
August 15, 2021
I would love to know how this book was received back in 1993, when computers at home (and certainly "InterNet" connections) were not yet commonplace. The author, an editor at Macworld, did an admirable job of explaining the technical concepts without interrupting the flow of the plot. Yes, there were some inaccuracies, but I can handle that in a work of fiction. This is a fun read for anyone who enjoys reminiscing about the earlier days of computing; my copy even has two mail-in cards promising free click-art from Macworld. Oh, and it was really nice to have a team of software developers as the protagonists. Added bonus: the main character grows as a person AND the author notes that the female lead has been unfairly left out of the boys' club.
June 11, 2017
I wanted to read this from (perhaps) a dozen pages in.
Half nostalgia, a quarter confirmation I remember how things work (as things are explained both by narrator and for the benefit of non-technical characters), and a quarter thriller.
Half nostalgia, a quarter confirmation I remember how things work (as things are explained both by narrator and for the benefit of non-technical characters), and a quarter thriller.
September 8, 2019
Humorous to read about technology in the 90s. While the tech has changed, human motivations like greed have not. I also liked the notion that most PCs in homes and businesses were Macs.
December 26, 2012
This was really interesting to read. It was probably right on the cutting edge when it came out but now it's so old that it was somewhat funny to read parts of it.
Pogue's the NYTimes Tech editor and I love his columns, so when I found this used I had to grab it. Still a really good book, even though very dated now.
Pogue's the NYTimes Tech editor and I love his columns, so when I found this used I had to grab it. Still a really good book, even though very dated now.
September 28, 2013
Although out-of-date technologically, it's a really great plot with twists and turns. The characters are very charasmatic and it has a good ending. I highly recommend it.
April 22, 2014
Interesting IT thriller.
March 1, 2015
Amusingly, the "paranoid" security described near the beginning is weaker than the standard security where I work now.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews