Book: Digital Deli, The Comprehensive, User-Lovable Menu of Computer Lore, Culture, Lifestyles and Fancy
Article excerpt
Digital Deli is a fantastic time capsule from 1984, edited by Steve Ditlea and credited to “The Lunch Group & Guests”, a menu-themed anthology (Appetizers, Soup and Crackers, Word Salad, Just Desserts) that tries to capture everything about the microcomputer moment as it was happening: hardware, culture, marriages, kids, and the quasi-religious fervor some […]
Digital Deli is a fantastic time capsule from 1984, edited by Steve Ditlea and credited to “The Lunch Group & Guests”, a menu-themed anthology (Appetizers, Soup and Crackers, Word Salad, Just Desserts) that tries to capture everything about the microcomputer moment as it was happening: hardware, culture, marriages, kids, and the quasi-religious fervor some folks brought to their new machines. The contributor list alone is worth the price of admission, Steve Wozniak, Robert Frankston, Bill Gates, and even Timothy Leary all show up with short pieces, alongside journalists covering everything from software piracy to computer horoscopes.
What makes it worth digging up now is that nobody writing it knew how any of this would turn out. Les Solomon’s account of the first DIY personal computer and Wozniak’s own telling of the Homebrew Computer Club days sit right next to domestic entries like an Osborne “memoir” and a family computer diary, genuinely useful primary-source texture if you’re into retro computing or just want to understand the headspace of the people building the machines we’re still riffing on today.
It’s a scrapbook, not an argument, so some pieces (yes, computer horoscopes) have aged into pure curiosities rather than insight, but that’s part of the fun.
The whole thing is hosted free online at atariarchives.org, maintained by Kay Savetz, so there’s no excuse not to go poke around: atariarchives.org/deli.
And you can likely buy a pre-owned, printed copy of the book from amazon.com.