Valley of the Boom

Had to write a review. This series deserves better. Anyone dismissing it due to the unusual manner in which it is told is missing the entire point. If you were a part of this time, or if you work in tech it is a must see. Original, informative and well acted. Fun for all is too be had as long as you approach it with an often mind.

Hybrid Docu-Drama, where some of the prime-movers appear in cameo to describe their exploits, intertwined with actors that act out the same events. The process is brought down a bit by simply too much information, kind of a docu-drama for dummies. Still, the subject matter is fascinating, as were those times. No idea where the thing is headed but my best guess is that a big fat torpedo will be launched at the memory of Microsoft mid-series, since a great deal of the setup seems to be super friendly to the legacy of Netscape and the 'nerds are antisocial brainiacs' fanboy movement. Witness the silly placements of oddly pretentious Arianna Huffington thoughts. I guess finding humor is easier that finding an understanding of the things that make one's life work, 20 years after.

I lived through this. Even visited Netscape in New York while working for SGWarburg in the UK. The senior analyst working on the floor above me sold his Mozilla (his name of the source) code to a young guy in the US for what we were lead to believe was roughly 10k pounds.. We used to tease him about it. So, perhaps the original premise of the origination is perhaps a tad skewed.

I still have the the original documentation encapsulating the beyond browser technical specs for a hybrid between browsers and email which indeed my team created, which in turn became Outlook after our MS partners stole it. It really is plain to see were you to simply look at the original specs. So the documentary is absolutely accurate in how aggressive MS was back in the day.

I actually employed a Pixelon senior technician. He became an SGWarburg director, which trust me was not all it was cracked up to be. He turned out to be a wife beater and ended up in an Californian jail after being tracked down and extradited for previous misdemeanors to a female employee in the US. Which kind of summarises the Pixelon culture. Go #MeToo.

As a production presenting the times this rendition is both mildly inaccurate and entirely American centric. The internet after all was not invented by Americans, DARPA not withstanding. Oddly it was actually one of these rare things that came out of a bipartisan collaboration originating in Switzerland. But hey, far be it for me to attempt to represent an actual representation of the history I worked through, participated in and indeed continue to retain original documentation defining the instigation inherent in the actuality of this period.

This production is worthy. Perhaps it will encourage viewers to look further.

Most of the reviews are a riot over the confusion of documentary or drama. I believe the fact here is, the stories they were able to portray. If you want to learn about the..boom, this is your best bet. It's also the most accurate of portrayals for Silicon Valley. All I ask, leave your mind open to other ways cinema, story telling can be shot.

What a time the 1990's were. Fortunes made and lost in hours, industries created and destroyed overnight, new innovations being created and sometimes eclipsed within days, vaporware and outright fraud being shopped around and making millions. This is the story of a few of the major players in Silicone Valley during this time. The story is intertwined with actors acting out key plot points in both realistic and artistic ways and some of the real players telling us what happened and what it was like. This is a must watch for anyone who lived through this era in computers or anyone interested in what is going to happen to the industry in the future, we all know history is destined to repeat itself.