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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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