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Ferguson also makes the mistake of many old soldiers: Midway through the book, you realize he's repeated himself a number of times. Subplots and anecdotes reappear throughout, and you get the idea that he (or his editor, at least) might have spent a bit more time reducing the stew. Indeed, this points the way to a more general problem with the tech-mogul autobiography: Newly crowned infotech winners -- also like old soldiers -- love to hear themselves talk.

To my surprise, a subsequent reading of "Renegades of Empire" left me pining for Ferguson's relatively well-crafted prose. This book -- essentially the same tale of digital domination, told for a younger age group -- recounts the rise and rise of a band of Microsoft techies who pirate company resources for their own ends. Their digital magnum opus -- code-named "Chrome" -- is portrayed as a cunning, in-house intrigue to accelerate the information revolution by fusing browsers with televisions.

The much younger subjects of this account, written by journalist Michael Drummond, show a good deal less seasoning and sense of responsibility, if that is possible, than Ferguson; their persistently adolescent, antisocial leitmotifs run throughout this book. The renegades' collective borrowed nickname -- the "Beastie Boys" -- pretty much betrays it right there, I think, both ethically and demographically. Once, rebellious young men threw rocks at passing cars. Now, it appears, they hijack Fortune 500s.

At least these bêtes noires had the good sense to enlist the services of a journalist. Or perhaps sense had nothing to do with it; when one of the book's subjects, Alex St. John, speaks about Bill Gates, one wonders how much success he would have had crafting a coherent account on his own: "'Bill kicks ass,' St. John said. 'I like kicking ass. I enjoy the feeling of killing competitors and dominating markets.'" Yikes. Business ethics for the Quake/"South Park" set.

Like many of the new crop of popular tech/biz titles, this one seems to have been produced "in Web time" -- that is to say, very quickly. The writing is often uneven, even fatuous at times ("All things have an origin -- this book is no exception." Shoot me.) But my principal gripe is with the disturbing lack of conscience in the way it lionizes its subjects' disregard for rules, authority, prior accomplishment and fair play. The rush of technology, apparently, leaves little time for life's lessons on the value of being nice to one another.

Much of the drama of these books plays against the backdrop of Microsoft -- Ferguson competes against, then eventually sells his company to, the Gatesian juggernaut, while the Beastie Boys use Microsoft as their primary object of rebellion and corporate defacement. One would think that either of these accounts might teach us something new about Bill Gates and company. Oddly, neither seems to shine any new light into Redmond's heart of darkness. Readers hoping for new insights will most likely be disappointed, particularly in light of recent developments in the Microsoft antitrust trial. Not much of a surprise, when the subject jitters in Web time. By the time you've served up the dish in hardcover, it's most likely stale.

Which isn't to say either book is completely without merit. Ferguson, in particular, exerts some well-spent effort deflating the myths of Silicon Valley corporate omnipotence, while at the same time giving the government and universities their proper share of glory in the cultivation of the Internet miracle. He also takes a shot or two at the failures of open markets in the context of his business -- not something one would expect from a gung-ho start-up ninja, particularly one who has so richly benefited from the arrangement.

Both books are particularly juicy specimens of the prevailing business rhetoric of the dot-com era. There is a kind of language -- an amalgam of hyperbole, geek-speak, and pop-media code phrases, delivered in a perverse, super-desiccated and emotionally bankrupt tone -- to be found in both of these books, and it is this contemporary mutation of language, rather than the stories themselves, that may ultimately communicate the Zeitgeist most effectively.

Both books are heavily padded with histories already rendered more capably and compactly in other sources. The spin is at times a little strong; as historical accounts, both are undoubtedly much tidier and more congratulatory to their subjects than many industry veterans and insiders will be able to accept. Here the manic mood of the times should be of considerable assistance; one of the perquisites of business fame is the likelihood with which you'll be able to pass off your opinions as historical fact.

Ferguson, at least, seems well aware of this danger; nearly the first thing he does in "High St@kes, No Prisoners" is roll his credits: wonder-boy start-up entrepreneur; government policy wonk; academic. Presumably, he seeks to preempt attacks on all three sides in case his ideas don't float entirely on their own merits. (I can hardly blame him -- the high-tech crowd is a particularly pedantic and fractious bunch, as just a casual look at Slashdot should demonstrate.) Alas, much of the enjoyment I might have scraped from these two books was obstructed by my own high-tech version of post-traumatic vigilance; as a former Silicon Valley foot soldier, my reading was regularly perturbed by alternate, less flattering interpretations of these heroes' journeys. They would not stop leaping to mind, no matter how high I suspended disbelief.

In the end, most the protagonists of these war stories seem to spend a good deal of time shouting the predictable epithets of, "I told you so," and "See? I won! I was right!" to their present and former adversaries: employers, managers, competitors, VCs and the Justice Department, to name a few. This, at the very least, has an unmistakable ring of authenticity; one of the signal traits of the techno-pugilist is the inexorable compulsion to have the last word.

Still, for all the ephemeral pettiness of these two works -- and the many others like them -- there may yet be something profound about them after all. The appearance of this bumper crop of digital glory stories, and at such an accelerating pace, may itself be a kind of meta-parable for the industry. After all, how many more glory days can be ahead of us if the glory is now itself for sale, on bookshelves everywhere? And just how much longer before we find it, marked down and forlorn, on the bargain racks?
salon.com | Dec. 16, 1999

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