A2's tech scene is as enthusiastic as it is diverse, and this could be seen at this year's Arbcamp. I met a lot of cool people and increased my intellectual range!

Some of the mini-talks were deeply technical, others were frivolous, and still others were as hippy-dippy as what you'd find at any given barcamp in Berkeley. Much like the teach-ins at the dawn of the internet age, barcamps are about conveying knowledge over open channels.

I can appreciate this because I recently finished John Markoff's What the Doormouse Said. Doormouse is an account of the fruitful collision between tech and social forces in the Bay Area in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Out from all of that energy and confusion emerged what so many of us rely on and enjoy every day: personal computers, the internet, and cyber culture.