I'm in trouble because of a personal policy.
More than 40 years ago I developed a policy to never read about or watch a film about someone I knew personally. The reason was simple and obvious: I knew that person on many dimensions that I can remember vividly, while the medium representation of that person is very limited and inadequate. Like reading a comic book version of a great book such as Moby Dick or Tom Sawyer.
That policy has stood the test of time. I knew Jim Jones and Harvey Milk. Nothing written or filmed about either comes close to the reality I experienced. The material on both were far off the mark.
So what presents the current problem?
As I get older, more and more people are included in the net of people being described in the media. There is a new musical about Doug Engelbart and Bill English with a role for Stewart Brand.
I was a central character in the hippie world, almost at the very center. What should be my policy now?
I knew Doug from the running group around the Portola Institute. Folks, we ran in tennis shoes. The whole running 'thing' including Running magazine and running shoes grew out of that group.
I went to Doug's lab at SRI (still a non-profit in those days) and got a private demonstration. Doug was an engineer with a vision. As a person, he had little affect. His whole operation was a 'kludge', a word we used back then. The thing that ultimately became the 'mouse' was a metallic cross between a multi-keyed harmonica and a knife sharpener. The screen and keyboard were as slow as molasses..literally. Just one little cursor and one slow letter entry at a time. A system I used and screamed at for the next decade while writing two books. Doug didn't even have a line editor yet.
William English, Bill, to everyone I knew, was a good friend of mine. We worked together over several decades, along with his wife Roberta. Everyone who knew them, mentioned them together. Bill came to run Xerox Parc and went to Japan to develop the Japanese keyboard when he got Xerox to form a partnership with Fuji. I tell one story about Bill here. I stayed at their house in Tokyo.
I will still follow my policy of not dealing with media about people I knew or know. I will just start writing some of my memories.