Clyde blends personal experience with technological and racial history to reveal how these things influenced one another. This wide-ranging memoir includes complex details about software and hardware as well as an exploration of IBM’s ties to oppressive regimes. While his examination of the past can’t change his relationship with his father, Clyde Ford’s words powerfully honor his father’s dreams and contributions to the digital age.
As he seeks to contextualize his father’s and his own time as minority hires at IBM, Ford includes too few fully fleshed-out personal anecdotes among footnoted summaries of other books about IBM and its famed chair, Thomas J. Watson, who personally hired the author’s father. Ford contrasts Watson’s bringing his father onboard with IBM’s involvement with such racist horrors as eugenics, the Holocaust, and apartheid. Less convincingly presented are Ford’s views on how the atmosphere at IBM impacted his father or himself and the dynamics of institutional racism that 'thinking black' apparently helped them fend off.
A masterful storyteller, Ford interweaves his personal story with the backdrop of the social movements unfolding at that time, providing a revealing insider’s view of the tech industry. IBM’s storied past is not without blemish ... Whether recounting the domestic drama that played out between his parents or how his father taught him to program IBM’s first computer as a kid, Ford provides a simultaneously informative and entertaining narrative. He delves into historical and contemporary intersections of race, history, and technology to show that technical advancements are never completely bias-free because they are driven by humans, who are inherently biased ... A powerful, engrossing look at race and technology.
... powerful ... Writing with a potent sense of outrage, Ford portrays his father as more conciliatory than he would have been when he himself was hired by IBM in 1971 and brought with him an African nationalist pride ... Ford’s thought-provoking narrative tells the story of African-American pride and perseverance.
