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A review by odin45mp
Imagine That!: The story of Ed Smith, one of the first African Americans to work in the design of video games and personal computers by Benj Edwards, Edward Smith
3.0
First of all, thank you Benj Edwards for helping get this story out here. I would never have known about Ed Smith otherwise. I appreciate your articles and tweets that educate me about the early years of one of my hobbies and favorite fields.
Second, there was some cool stuff going on in the late 70s/early 80s computing of which I am still largely ignorant, and I am happy to have learned a bit about the MP1000 and the IM1 in this book, when I knew nothing about them before. There was some really cool things done in the development and marketing. Just because it failed as the industry switched from cassette to floppy disks doesn't mean the people who worked on it were bad at their jobs. I found that to be a valuable lesson to take with me. I found Ed's insights into the industry and how to be a good manager and a good employee to be reminders of how we can work to be better people.
Third, this book needs editing. Badly. The first half meanders and rambles like we're sitting down and Ed is just reminiscing about his early life, with tangents as friends and mentors show up that don't add to the story at hand. It could be reworked and made tighter and more compelling. If the friend has a later development in life, maybe we could slide that that in when we reach that point in time later in the book. The second half is more straightforward as we move through his career and accomplishments. However I noticed several copy edits that needed caught in the latter half.
This book deserves a 4 star rating for telling the story of an African American pioneer in the computing industry, and for the humility and grace with which he describes his lucky breaks and the way to move your own career forward and up - some of the advice feels a little dated as we move more fully into the gig economy, but most of the principles about leveraging who you know and how to build your own skills still apply. This book deserves a 2 star or even 1 star rating for editing, it needs a lot of work to become a more compelling story and clean up the copy edit misses. So I am averaging it to a 3.
Second, there was some cool stuff going on in the late 70s/early 80s computing of which I am still largely ignorant, and I am happy to have learned a bit about the MP1000 and the IM1 in this book, when I knew nothing about them before. There was some really cool things done in the development and marketing. Just because it failed as the industry switched from cassette to floppy disks doesn't mean the people who worked on it were bad at their jobs. I found that to be a valuable lesson to take with me. I found Ed's insights into the industry and how to be a good manager and a good employee to be reminders of how we can work to be better people.
Third, this book needs editing. Badly. The first half meanders and rambles like we're sitting down and Ed is just reminiscing about his early life, with tangents as friends and mentors show up that don't add to the story at hand. It could be reworked and made tighter and more compelling. If the friend has a later development in life, maybe we could slide that that in when we reach that point in time later in the book. The second half is more straightforward as we move through his career and accomplishments. However I noticed several copy edits that needed caught in the latter half.
This book deserves a 4 star rating for telling the story of an African American pioneer in the computing industry, and for the humility and grace with which he describes his lucky breaks and the way to move your own career forward and up - some of the advice feels a little dated as we move more fully into the gig economy, but most of the principles about leveraging who you know and how to build your own skills still apply. This book deserves a 2 star or even 1 star rating for editing, it needs a lot of work to become a more compelling story and clean up the copy edit misses. So I am averaging it to a 3.