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From Booklist
Former Wired magazine writer Borsook profiles
Silicon Valley's zeitgeist in decidedly dyspeptic, dysphoric
terms. Amused by but unenthusiastic about the technogeek
ethos, which she knows intimately, she constructs a sardonic
polemic against its attitudes. The valley's prime offenses
are a posture of extreme antagonism toward government, the
exaltation of free markets, and beatific admiration for
novelist-ideologue Ayn Rand. Measured hardly
describes her approach, for she castigates by means of such
incandescent adjectival invention that if it were made into
a computer program, its brand name would be
"Neologism." Still, it is Borsook's snug interface
with technolibertarian technospeak that makes her book so
delicious. She recruits their networked, microchipped idioms
to examine Silicon Valley's gossamery connections to the
larger society, as exemplified by computer moguls'
indifference to philanthropy, which she deplores. Perhaps
she overcaricatures her targets and is too sanguine about
government's supposed benevolence, but those faults are
compensated for readers by her sharp style and perceptive,
humorous observations. Gilbert Taylor
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