Sorties into the IT Hurricane (3rd edn)

There are 195 Sorties described in these pages - all of them memorable occasions in the author’s fifty year career in IT. They are presented in date order, and each consists of roughly one page of text and one or more accompanying images; so the book can be read as a continuous stream of entries. However, each Sortie is also part of one or more of nineteen Short Stories. Each part of a Short Story includes the page number of the next part, so the more adventurous reader may prefer to choose a Short Story and jump through the labelled Sorties. The Short Stories range from personal computing topics such as Portable Devices, Home Computing and the Rise of the Internet, to more professional topics such as Designing Systems for People, Office Automation and Bidding for Outsourcing Contracts. Readers will also discover that some pages have boxes instructing Alexa to play various albums or songs. These give the reader the opportunity to use their own streaming services to play some of the music that the author enjoyed at the time of an event. The book provides an illuminating background to some of the author’s experiences that contributed to the 2025 book 'Collecting in the Icon Age' that he wrote with his co-author, Peter Tolmie.