The New, New, Thing 26
| The New, New, Thing: A Silicon Valley Story | |
| author | Michael Lewis |
| pages | 267 |
| publisher | Norton |
| rating | 7/10 |
| reviewer | Jon Katz |
| ISBN | 0-393-04813-6 |
| summary | How Jim Clark and his big boat typify the new economy |
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.
Other books.. (Score:3)
you can take that money and. . . (Score:1)
You'd think with all that money, someone could make a stable, open source browser.
Do NOT refer to mozilla, I already know about mozilla, however, that is done by "volunteers", not a company.
Re:Other books.. (Score:2)
offtopic (Score:1)
Healtheon - big deal.. (Score:1)
It's funny that people are falling over each other running to give Jim Clarke money to do this. I'm sure most Sloshdotters who had to deal with medical insurance "invented" the same thing. Somehow no one wants to give us piles of money.
Of course the NYT article did not even consider the implications of having a centralized medical database accessible to doctors and insurance companies. Some of the consequences are not pretty.
Heh (Score:4)
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"
Wow... (Score:2)
Negative One, Here I Come! (I can spare the karma)
Clark's boat the Hyperion (Score:2)
Is this a review of the book or of Jim Clark? (Score:1)
You've surpassed yourself, Jon (Score:1)
Re:Other books.. (Score:3)
I read it this summer, & speaking as someone who did his phone support time for this product (a period of pain I've been meaning to document somewhere -- think of it as 18 months spent teaching Joe Sixpack about networking) I found his silences more intreguing than his revelations.
According to this partial autobiography, Clark & Marc Andreesen almost *didn't* create Netscape: Andreesen was so sick of how his alma mater treated him over creating Mosaic, that his first thought was to write any kind of software -- as long as it was NOT a web browser.
His knowledge of the technical side of Netscape is weak at best. While he waxes eloquent about the long hours the original Netscape programmers spent coding version 0.9, he seems oblivious about just what they were actually doing, let alone the fact that the shrink-wrapped 1.1 version was released with some serious bugs (e.g., the winsock failed to work under Windows 3.11 for Workgroups due to NDIS driver conflicts). Heck, all of his knowledge about Jamie Zawinski -- probably the best known programmer at Netscape -- appears to have been drawn from JWZ's own web page.
Two leitmotifs shine thru Clark's book. The first one is the nature of Silicon Valley: its featureless suburban sprawl, constant pressure of work & deadlines, & ``get rich quick" mentality. And the other one is Clark's monomania with Bill Gates. (Yes, that is a reference to captain Ahab.)
From the very first chapter, Clark harps about Bill Gates & Microsoft, complains about them, worries about them, gets in some catty comments about them, & defends his behavior in reference to them. One would suspect, from this book, that Clark was creating Netscape as a company in order to destroy Microsoft, & woul dnot rest until he could plow Redmond & sow its field with salt.
In short, _Netscape_Time_ was in interesting read, but as every military veteran has said about written accounts of the war he has fought in, ``that wasn't *my* war."
Geoff
Re:Puhleze. Earth Does Not Revolve Around the Vall (Score:2)
For instance: my first job out of grad school was at a company called TIS (Trusted Information Systems) [tis.com]. They're located in the countryside about a half-hour outside of Baltimore; there was a horse pasture right next door. The power tended to go out when there was a good storm (machines were of course well-UPSed) and if we got a good snow, we shut down.
That office was the original location of whitehouse.gov, and developed the FireWall Tool Kit and the Gauntlet firewall. (I wasn't involved in any of those projects, BTW.) Not bad for a company in the middle of nowhere.
On the other hand, they did eventually get bought out by California-based Network Accociates.
The ABC of Book Reviews (Score:1)
First! (Not post) (Score:1)
That is *truly* a first. Usually, while Katz is obviously not one of the more popular people with everybody, he sure does get the comments pumping.
Either everybody's gone completely apathetic on me, or Katz has gotten nixed off of people's story lists.
Although I'm not a huge Katz fan, (not really at all, actually) I always keep him listed as an author I want to see, mostly because the responses attached to the article keep my unheated apartment warm in the winter.
Ouch. (Score:1)
The truth HURTS, doesn't it???
Oh sure, maybe not as much as falling on a bicycle that doesn't have a seat, but it HURTS...
-- Naked Gun
Re:First! (Not post) (Score:1)
Re:The ABC of Book Reviews (Score:2)
I'm not even really sure that it's our business, but that doesn't stop me from being nosy.
Jim Clark et al (Score:2)
In that context, I find it difficult to criticise his taste in nautical toys. If I had his kind of money, I'm sure I would indulge myself in a similar way. Those who risked their lives in the boat are similar to people who risk their lives climbing mountains; they knew there were risks when they signed on; they signed on because they wanted the experience (or the paycheck).
Sadly, I can't contribute much more because my copy of this book is presently wending its leisurely way from amazon.com
D
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Wafting Another Airball with Jon "Salieri " Katz (Score:2)
First off, my credentials. Born and raised in the Bronx, NYC. 205th street front and representing.
Second off, well there is no second off there is just...
The Meat of the Matter
You no good momo mook. Your luddite leaning columns are amuzing at best and insulting at the core. This is no excpetion. You reach escape velocity in your first few paragraphs, the rest being all strum and fluff.
So east coast born and breed cant cope with computers? Cant grasp the net? Wow Mr Katz, seems like all your work at the NAMBLA meeting heloing out the tortured yout of america has given you some great views on geography and technology.
Maybe now you can tell us how the home of the 25 World Series winning Yanks dont know about baseball becuase the east coast has no grasp of sunshine and sportsmanship.
Ill have more to say on this topic Mr Katz, I just wanted to chime in here as an Eastcoaster for a hearty "fuck you and the horse you blew".
Wafting Another Airball with Jon "Salieri " Katz (Score:2)
This from Jon "Any hype you can write I can hype better" Katz. This from a man hwo has done NOTHING of tech but writes about it as if he were its Joan Of Arc? ("Yes god i hear you , i will lead the poor masses to rethink their tech crazy ways and to let me have more contact with the young")
One of your main gripes about this book is that of ego. You simply cant let your mind think of Anyone with a larger ego than your own, can ya? Does it burn you so much that others are making millions while you are relegated to writting about the chewed over crumbs of a tech sceen that is leaving you in the dust?
Maybe what creates some aspects of greatness is ego driven to excelence. The goals may be good , evil , or more likely personal shades inbetween, but the mark is set and the pace is frantic and you Mr Jon "Ludties Unite and Smash Your Gameboys" Katz seek only to belittle the achievments with your own mediocracy.
Once again we see Jon "Salieri" Katz living up to his true sainted goal, to make the world safe from excelence, to level the fields of achievment, and to pave over the groundwork of the great with the blacktar sameness of his safe and effcient Information SuperKatzway.