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I had to explain that companies would make everyone a contractor if there weren't laws against it; that they would jump at the chance to unload the cost of medical coverage, overtime, holidays, sick leave.

"You think so?"

"Jesus, Joel. Companies don't give benefits because they like to. Peopl…

But I can't take this in. I want the conversation to move on. "And the women next to us," I say, "how old are they?" I had been looking at them, wondering if I were there yet.

He looks. "They're in their fifties," he says. For a moment I feel relief: I look younger, Oh good, I'm not there yet. B…

I didn't want my experience to be useless. I wanted it to be of value that someone could remember the lovely compactness of Release 3.0. [...] He would see it all as landfill, fit companions to my long disposed-of Kaypro II personal computer, first letter-quality daisy-wheel printer, and 300baud mo…

10:30 AM: programmer commute hour on the freeway. South toward Silicon Valley, the remnants of the fog are just lifting off the bay, and the sky breaks through, a washed-blue-jean blue. Four sparsely filled lanes, stock-option sports cars like mine pushing 80, delivery vans riding at the limit-a fr…

Many years and clients later, this greed for more data, and more again, had become a commonplace. It had become institutionalized as a good feature of computer systems: you can link them up, you can cross-check, you can find out all sorts of things you didn't set out to know. "I bet this thing can …