Extra Life: Coming of Age in Cyberspace

In this peculiar memoir of growing up at the same time as the computer, Bennahum, a contributing editor to Wired and other magazines, charts his lifelong obsession with the machine, from before he could type a four-line BASIC program to his days of amateur hacking to the time he took a trip to Microsoft's Seattle offices for a job interview. Implicitly challenging the distinction between geekiness and coolness, Bennahum tells of his early fascination with drugs, the solace he found in computers and the seductiveness of invading others' cyberprivacy. He writes as compellingly about the glee of his first hacking job as other memoirists have written about their first acid trip or incestuous relationship. Bennahum captures with poignancy the yearning he had to be a ""Super User,"" the computer lab's star du jour, as well as the thrill of discovery when working with computers. But his memoir is marred by too many unexplained digressions, such as the all-too-casual suggestion that his sister became a ""bad girl"" because she didn't look for computers to rescue her. The book's largest bug lies in the fact that Bennahum spends too much time documenting when he should be enlightening. Must we really know that ""Paul Haahr taught me how to play Ping-Pong with the switches,"" when we'd rather read his insights into such a moment? Those who grew up during the same pivotal cyber-time as the author will recognize at least some of his sentiments but find little new in them; those who didn't might assume that they didn't miss much. Author tour. (Nov.)