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The New, New, Thing
The East Coast - especially the business and media elites clustered in New York City - may never get over the rise of Silicon Valley.
Justified or not, there is a sense of incredulity about the wealthy and powerful headquarters of Computing. Their wonder is very evident in Michael Lewis's entertaining but flawed new book.
The awe is understandable. Unlike other trends and social movements that emanate in California, the major players in the computer industry aren't moving East, nor is it being gobbled up by Eastern money. New Yorkers can't quite grasp how computers, the Net and the Web moved to the forefront of commerce, culture and communications so rapidly.
They can hardly believe they no longer inhabit the center of the universe - they sure don't like it -- and they're increasingly desperate to learn more about the people who do.
Day by day, Silicon Valley only seems to grow wealthier and more important. In some ways, the valley south of San Francisco has become one of the world's most powerful communities, eclipsing traditional banking and cultural centers.
It's left institutions like Wall Street and journalism confused and unnerved, and prompted a parade of journalists, scholars and authors to head for Silicon Valley in an effort to explain to the country exactly what the hell is going on out there.
Michael Lewis's "The New, New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story" is the latest effort in that genre. Lewis wrote "Liar's Poker," a terrific account of the corruption, greed and madness that swept Wall Street in the late 80's.
The vehicle Lewis has chosen to explain what he calls the "paradigm shift" that Silicon Valley represents is the legendary technology entrepeneur Jim Clark -- the broody, impulsive, technology and toy-obsessed creator of Silicon Graphics and Netscape and, more recently, Healtheon, a much-hyped startup that claims it will revolutionize America's gazillion-dollar health care industry.
Silicon Valley, as Lewis makes clear but outsiders have troubling grasping, is nothing like Wall Street. Despite frequent comparisons to the money, Valley techno-entrepeneurs are not like Wall Street's bond-trading buccaneers, a number of whom ended the 80's in jail or in ruins. Silicon Valley was built by engineers and the people who run it tend to be inward, brutally hard-working and a bit dull.
Clark is a distinctive, almost spectacular exception.
Lewis somewhat breathlessly describes this savvy eccentric and his amazing ability to convince the world and the Valley venture capitalists that he has a bead on the next big thing over the horizon. His success at doing this, and enriching his loyalists in the bargain, even though his creations haven't always been as visionary or profitable as the public's perception of them, is one of the more remarkable parts of the story.
One of Lewis's problems in this book is that although he continuously portrays Clark as a radical new kind of economic visionary, his hero reeks a bit of the old-fashioned mogul - temperamental, smart, egomaniacal, lucky and arrogant. Clark appears to go at least as far on balls as he does on brains.
A significant chunk of the book is spent aboard Clark's yacht The Hyperion, which features not only the world's largest single-mast, but claims to be the first fully computer-operated sailboat and a prototype of computer systems that will control homes in the future - perhaps, Lewis thinks, Clark's next "new, new thing."
Lewis is a talented writer, and his book is compulsively readable and entertaining. Sketches like the portrayal of the impoverished Indian engineer-geeks who make their way across the world to become millionaire jackpot winners in Clark's start-ups are wondrous.
But Lewis's flair papers over some substantial cracks. Much of Clark's behavior - his indifference to people, his reclusiveness, his sometimes reckless penchant for thrill toys like helicopters and giant boats, his habit of destroying people who get in his way or differ in style - are more disturbing and obnoxious than they are visionary.
Lewis is sometimes over-generous to Clark, crediting him with launching the entire Information Age, sometimes also confusing vicious and erratic behavior with far-sightedness. Clark's genius for playing mind-games with venture capitalists who are terrified of being left out isn't millenial economic thinking; it's old-fashioned poker bluffing.
Another nagging problem: for all the money Clark has proudly amassed - his ability to manipulate, even stampede Silicon Valley money his way yields some of the most compelling sections of the book - there's this difficulty: few of his "new, new things" have really worked out all that well. Silicon Graphics is successful, but Netscape (which Clark grasped the importance of, but didn't invent) was eaten for lunch by Microsoft and sold to AOL. In fact, for all of his bluster, Clark appears terrified of Bill Gates in this recounting of his life - he flees or gives in to Microsoft at every turn, even though he helped initiate the government's anti-trust suit against the company.
Healtheon is, so far, mostly a figment of Clark's and the media's imagination. Part of Clark's notion of the "new, new thing" is that even though he comes up with blockbuster ideas for the future, he doesn't deign to actually run any of them or take responsibility for how - and if - they work out. Though he's dismissed in this book as a reactionary blockhead, Gates, one of Clarke's many arch-foes, has been markedly more steady, purposeful and successful.
Clark is portrayed here as a beyond-brilliant thinker whose ability to think outside the box puts dull-witted bankers and corporate types to shame. But it's hard to find the qualities that distinguish him from lots of other brilliant, eccentric, stupendously successful moguls - from Hearst and Carnegie to Turner, Eisner, Murdoch and Gates. All are savvy, instinctive, arrogant, sometimes cruel rule-breakers who spot moments and seize them. And almost all, unlike Clark, eventually grew up.
Whether he's learning to pilot a helicopter or stranding a crew without a working engine in the middle of the ocean, Clark is often beyond reckless. He seems willing to risk lives other than his own for kicks, a trait Lewis finds oddly alluring.
Lewis's use of The Hyperion through the book - Clark retreats to the boat repeatedly to conjure up the next "new thing" from remote spots around the globe - suggests the worst, not the best, thinking about new technologies.
In fact, the 157-foot-long yacht, built by wary Dutch craftsmen is, as Lewis describes it, a fine example of wasteful techno-hubris. The computers on board never perform as well as the sailors they supplant, and after reading this book, one would be loathe to entrust one's life or family to any such system. Lewis also brushes aside troubling and obvious questions: Do sailboats really need to be computerized? Did the Hyperion need such a giant mast?
Are deranged billionaires like Clark really so admirable for wreaking pointless digital havoc with even the most pristine and traditional of pursuits? Why not use computers to direct hikes in the woods? Engineers aren't always so reckless about the things they make, and their consequences. Clark's lack of introspection and sense of moral responsibility are sometimes shocking.
Michael Lewis is a great story-teller, and Clark a juicy character. But what Lewis knows best is how money moves through the modern American economy. And the way Clark financially anticipates, out-negotiates and outmaneuvers the growing number of sharks attracted to Silicon Valley are the very best parts of "The New, New Thing."
The book has other lapses. We learn nothing of Clark's personal or family life, other than a perfunctory, patched-on visit by Lewis to Clarke's hometown of Plainview, Texas, and bold "new things" like Healtheon are never explained or described. Even after reading the book and spending 15 minutes on the company's website [http://www.myhealtheon.com], I have no idea what the company does or how it works.
Clark's next big billion-dollar ideas? A company called My C.F.O whose software will help rich people keep track of their finances (think of it, Clark enthuses, one company managing all that wealth!) And a sailboat half again the size of the enormous Hyperion, or longer than 250 feet.
Maybe this is a case where the author finds his subject a bit too admirable.
Heh. Katz, talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Replace 'Clark' with 'Geek' and see just how it applies to Katz' portrayal of geeks...
"Knowledge = Power = Energy = Mass"