The Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996)

Please don't spend money on this.

hyped garbage

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

First of all, this doc is from 1996. That being said: it chronicles the rise of the personal computer/home computer beginning in the 1970s with the Altair 8800, Apple II and VisiCalc. It continues through the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh revolution through the 1980s and the mid 1990s at the beginning of the Dot-com boom. The film ends before it all crashes in the late 1999s. But what the heck.

Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires is an interesting documentary. The title, Triumph of the Nerds, is a play on the 1984 comedy, Revenge of the Nerds. While this three part documentary is a great insight look at the history of computers, from its rise in the 1970s to the beginning of the Dot-com boom of the late 1990s. This documentary movie is so dated. 3com? Compaq? Locus? Wow, there are a lot of now defunct companies being feature in this movie. It's also weird to see how Apple company, in such decline when this movie was filmed. It's weird, seeing Steve Jobs introduce as the CEO of NeXT and Pixar than Apple. It's also weird to think that the Oracle-company were once thought as a threat to Microsoft! It's also weird to see that the Internet business is just about to start. So, no Googles, Facebook or other internet companies mention here. This three-part film first premiered on PBS in June 1996 and continue in three, 3 hour narrative miniseries episodes included: Impressing their Friends, Riding the Bear, and Great Artists Steal. All narrating by self-professed gossip columnist, Robert X. Cringely AKA Mark Stephens who wrote the novel, 'The Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires' in which the film is based on. Robert Cringely is alright host, but indeed very offended in his terms of words to describe this industry. I know that Robert Cringely is indeed a pen name pseudonym character that Mark Stephen create for his computer "gossip" column, but did this movie really need an over the top narrator. It's like having a fictional character like Toby Radloff from 2003's American Splendor do a serious real life comic book documentary. It doesn't match up. I know, the character morph from a private eye type to a slick, womanizing tech insider, but gees… it's not that popular. He sounds like he's a bitter old man, most of the time, than a real journalist. He wasn't even funny. There was a lot of not needed bitching in this movie from him. I just couldn't take the movie seriously when he complaining about his life, and how much, he's envy with some of these multi-billionaires with their outrageous lifestyles. While, yes, he sings about the successful tales of these businessmen, but he also degrade and beget them with negative stereotypes. How, he ever got interviews with Steve Jobs, Paul Allen, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak and others is a big mystery with all his sexist and crude remarks, he commands. He remind me of a self-hating leach of the computer industry. He's attitude isn't bad. It's in beta. He's just not-user friendly. He loves using the whole 'nerd' to describe them. The whole cartoony stereotype of a nerd intro being play in each episode beginning was just not needed. After all, this so-called nerds are making billions of dollars, today. If anybody is a nerd, it's Mark Stephen for lying that he got a Ph.D. and making hoaxes about his life. He's just not the man for this documentary. Part One: 'impressing their friends' focus on mostly the rise of personal computers with details about Altair 8800, Apple II, and VisiCalc. Part Two: 'Riding the Bear', mostly focus on the rise of Microsoft and IBM partnership. Then there was the oddly place mention of Compaq's cheap scheme to steal IBMs thunder, by reverse engineering. In my opinion, it's piracy in any legal term. I also love the mention of the creators of the Spreadsheets who misapplications of patent rights cause them, millions of dollars. While, both Compaq and the Spreadsheets sequence were interesting. It didn't really match the feel of the rest of the episode. Part Three: Great Artists Steal feels like most of it, should had been mention on Part Two with the whole Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows introduction and Compaq & Spreadsheets sequence on part 2, should be mention on this episode. After all, this episode is call 'Great Artist Steal". All three parts had some great information that made the movie worthwhile. The movie had some odd generic music playing the background, that make some scenes sound like a porno or a heavy metal concert. While, others felt like it dealt into the Lifestyles of Rich and Famous way too much. The interviews were great. The original interview that Jobs gave to Cringely for Triumph of the Nerds lasted about 70 minutes. Of those 70 minutes, only about 10 were used in the film. When Steve Jobs died in 2011, Triumph of the Nerds director Paul Sen searched for and found in his garage a discarded VHS copy of the original raw and unedited interview. He release the other footage as an independent film in 2012. It's worth checking out. Sadly, for this movie, Triumph of the Nerds doesn't have that as an extra special feature, so you might have to shell more money to see that part. Since the series was released in VHS format soon after airing; it might be hard for certain people to see through 3 hours of footage. The documentary was easy to get through, even in one seating, for me, but I would watch it, in three parts. The 2002 DVD by Ambrose Video, cut a few segments from the original program to make it, easier to watch for the audience. So, if you find yourself, wanting to watch, and unedited version. You might be out of luck, as it's hard to find. Overall: It's worth the watch. I wouldn't say, it's the best computer documentary out there. There are better films out there that has information that more present day. But if you're looking for a movie that show the times, how life was before Apple INC big comeback, the dot-com bust, and Microsoft monopoly into other media industries. Then this is your movie.

The production of the PBS miniseries "Triumph of the Nerds" as documented by journalist and self professed gossip columnist Robert Cringely is a campy trek through the personal computer revolution. The 3-hour narrative covered many of the notable characters responsible for the PC's development such as the inventive geeks, aspiring college hackers, social radicals, corporate marketeers, and leading up to the inevitable war of wills to bring about global, political, and economic change. The miniseries is as much about the personal computer revolution as it is about the one-upmanship ideology of bringing a better mouse trap to market. Piracy is deemed a good thing by the very players that use corporate legal methods to protect themselves from that very end. By means of reverse engineering, misapplications of patent rights, cleverly worded legal disclosure documents, so called `Virgin' engineers and outright theft of intellectual property; it is a sordid affair indeed. The story reads like a checklist in the PDA of Machiavelli's `The Prince'. It seems that `The Prince' is alive and well in the 21st Century.I would highly recommend this film to any geek or geek-in-training. Look also for "The Pirate's of Silicon Valley"

And we have THEM to thank for all of this.Your humble author can't help but wonder how Bob Cringely got the likes of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Paul Allen and others in front of the cameras for an honest look inside the slightly twisted minds that begat the personal computer.At 3 hours in length, "Triumph of the Nerds" isn't just a PBS miniseries. On home video, it becomes an epic. And why shouldn't it be? The personal computer has an impact on our lives equal to that of the light bulb and the automobile. But in the case of the PC, most of the people responsible for its creation and worldwide influence are still alive. These are flesh and blood humans, not fading historical sketches like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison."Triumph of the Nerds" was originally produced as a 20-year retrospective on the personal computer. But the PC will be 25 years old in the year 2000. I can't wait to see Bob Cringely's follow up.