Interesting piece by Chris Rhoads of the WSJ about one of the pioneers of Silicon Valley. The Twilight Years of Cap’n Crunch offers real insight into the early ‘wild’ years of Silicon Valley and describes the life and career of John Draper,
"In the decades since Mr. Draper gained fame for his
hacking skills as a "phone phreak" — he once claimed to have gotten
then-President Nixon on the phone — Silicon Valley has aged and
matured. Pioneers that Mr. Draper worked with, such as Apple’s Steve
Jobs, have gone on to become wealthy members of the business
establishment.Then there is "Cap’n Crunch," part of an aging
community of high-tech wunderkinds. Once tolerated, even embraced, for
his eccentricities, Mr. Draper now lives on the margins of this
affluent world, still striving to carve out a role in the business
mainstream.Although his appearance and hand-to-mouth existence
belie it, Mr. Draper developed one of the first word-processing
programs as well as the technology that made possible voice-activated
telephone menus. He receives invitations to speak to foreign
governments and international conferences. At a recent celebration of Apple
Inc.’s 30th anniversary, Mr. Draper, sporting a straggly beard, stood
to contribute a story, causing the room to break into applause.Mr. Draper spent three stints in jail in the 1970s for
tampering with the phone system. A court-appointed psychiatrist once
found him to be "psychotic," although another found nothing wrong with
him. Until a fall at a conference in Istanbul aggravated a back injury,
Mr. Draper was a regular in the rave scene, where people gather in
remote locations and dance through the night to electronic music. Mr.
Draper once did $10,000 worth of Web-site design and other computer
work for a Bay-area therapist in return for physical therapy on his
back because he lacks health insurance."
Really a good read and the WSJ offers some great features online including a photo gallery and video blog of Mr. Draper called CrunchTV.
posted by David
