Whole earth software catalog

The impossible (and unachieved) task of the Whoie Earth Software Catalog is to identify and comparatively describe all of the best personal computer products - especially software, where the most confusion reigns. Part of the impossibility is that those who know a program well don't have sufficient comparative experience; at the same time, the professional wide comparers don't have the deeper use experience. The only relief from the paradox is sustained discussion, gossip, and argument among the enraptured deeps and the cynical wides, and that's all this book is. It came to greater convergence of opinion than we expected.

Personal computers are skill machines. We took that as the organizing principle of the research and the book. Playing, Writing, Analyzing, Organizing, Accounting, Managing, Drawing, Telecommunicating, Learning, and that profoundest of skills, Et Cetera. For each, Barbara Robertson found and directed a Domain Editor to be responsible for all that appeared and failed to appear in that section, and to collaborate fully with the other Domain Editors. Thanks to talent and luck, it worked pretty well. One reader (you), one computer marketplace, one book - not an anthology