I don't think it hurts to be occasionally reminded of the origins of hacker culture. Its a shame there isn't an equivalent book report style article about the demo scene, or the hard landing of AI and symbolics, or the rise and fall of Parcplace, Digitalk and VisualAge and the falling out of favour on Wall street.
History won't repeat but it will rhyme and there are plenty of failed business models to study in there, or simply clever bits of software to be discussed, or even just crazy stories to be amused by.
This is a topic I find myself periodically doing casual research on, and I agree -- I think it would be an interesting topic for a book. A friend's mother-in-law worked for Symbolics (or maybe Lisp Machines Inc) doing marketing. I've chatted with her a little bit about it, and it sounds like a neat era, worthy of more attention.
