A swashbuckler with the world at his feet

The New New Thing; By Michael Lewis; W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2000; 268 pp; Rp 311,000 (hardback)

JAKARTA (JP): Jim Clark is brilliant and driven, which is to be expected. He is also surprisingly petulant and childish for a man who has shaped and continues to shape the economy of the U.S. and, so it follows, the world.

He holds grudges against those who defy him or simply displease him, yet those loyal to him are given access to some of the fantastic amounts of wealth Clark created as the founder of Silicon Graphics, Netscape (the company that triggered the start of the new economy) and Healtheon, three of the larger success stories to emerge from the Silicon Valley.

Clark is the creator and the searcher for the new new thing, defined as that technology that will alter both the course of the economy and the way people live; though it is not clear if he is driven in his search by the desire to shape the future or the desire to have the most money.

While much of the book takes place in the Silicon Valley, the figurative kitchen where the most brilliant chefs cook up the latest dishes of technology, to steal a metaphor from the book, do not simply dismiss it if you have an aversion to technology, for it does not read like a college textbook for an engineering course.

Michael Lewis' portrait of Clark and the new economy reads more like a classic adventure tale, and in many ways that is what it is. Half of the tale takes place during an Atlantic crossing aboard the Hyperion, Clark's futuristic yacht that in theory is completely run by computers.

The yacht, besides being a testing ground for the technology of the future, is a massive symbol of Clark's wealth and his desire to have more than anyone else. The boat, a bit of a floating art gallery with it Monets and Picassos, was built with the world's tallest mast, though much to Clark's displeasure, in a clear case of mast envy, there is talk that someone is building a yacht whose mast will pip Clark's.

The other half of the tale, no less exciting or adventurous, and in some respects even more so, plays out in the Silicon Valley, home of the seekers of the new new thing and, oh yes, money.

Many of these seekers come from India and play vital roles in creating the technology of the future that springs from the valley. Though not gone into in great detail, there are some interesting looks at a number of these Indians who came from small, impoverished villages to the world of big money that is the Silicon Valley.

This is particularly interesting and relevant following Bill Gates recent visit to India to admire the country's burgeoning information technology sector and form a cooperation with an Indian IT company.

Lewis interweaves these two tales to provide us a picture of Clark as he gropes toward the future, both his and ours. From his battles with the venture capitalists who provide the money to turn his ideas into viable enterprises and who, to Clark's way of thinking, unfairly take a piece of the wealth created by these companies, to the computers on board the Hyperion he spent so many years writing code for, Clark emerges as a brilliant, demanding and impatient man with his eyes on both his bank account and the future.

The new economy as defined by Clark and others like him in the Silicon Valley is a roller-coaster ride of fast wealth and giant technological leaps. Lewis captures the excitement and daring of these economic revolutionaries, leaving one with a sense of admiration for their daring, envy for their wealth and more than a little fear at the thought that so much of our economy is dependent on the enterprises of swashbucklers like Clark.

--David Eyerly