Silicon Follies: A Dot.Comedy

In his satire of Silicon Valley and its technological trappings, Scoville portrays a world as rich with youth and enthusiasm as it is with hypocrisy and loneliness. Originally published as a series of short works on Salon.com, this ""dot.comedy"" is the story of TeraMemory, a fictitious tech behemoth, and its attempt to revolutionize the Internet through the launch of its new product, appropriately named WHIP (or Wireless, High-density Internet Protocol). As the story unfolds, the digital age is viewed through the eyes of Barry, the arrogant TeraMemory CEO; Liz, Stanford English major turned marketing assistant; Steve, a single-minded antiestablishment hacker; and Steve's best friend, Paul, possibly the last humble engineer in the entirety of Silicon Valley. As WHIP's launch date approaches, with the requisite hype and stock price gyrations, Barry is nearly one-upped by Steve and his hacker community (collectively known as Free Bits). Meanwhile, Paul and Liz discover that e-mail communications and digital meetings are no substitute for love and human interaction. The novel's plot is one-dimensional and only real techies will appreciate all the code and jargon, but Scoville is a witty, savvy guide to the infotech world, la Douglas Coupland in Microserfs. (Jan.)