The new new thing via Nilesh

Since Nilesh still maintains email is the best/easy way to convey ideas to a group of people. Here is one of his blurbs with his permission (Hyperlink is mine :D)

I had heard good reviews of Liar's poker... so I went out to buy it. As it turned out, the shop I went to didn't have the book, but they did have The New New thing - by the same author, Michael Lewis.
Being the shrewd salesman that he was, the guy showed me the New new thing although i didnt ask for it. Being the bibliophile that I am, I spent over 600 bucks and bought it.
Fortunately, ti turned out to be a good book,

The New New thing was written in the pre-April 2001 era and chronicles the story of Jim Clark.
All the geeks in this world can be neatly divided into 2 categories: those who know who Jim Clark is and the rest. (the rest should seriously re-consider their own aspirations and claims to geekdom and take approrpiate corrective action).

As with all big events in history, it all began with something so trivial, it was almost impossible that the event could have triggered a global economic frenzy unlike any seen ever before.
It all began with a boat.
It was a pretty boat and a really big boat - the world's largest single sail yatch. It was also designed to be completely controlled and run by computer. If you wanted to switch off a bulb, you'd punch in some commands and the computer(s) would switch off the light for you. Navigation, control, the engine - all were controlled by the computer. Needless to say, it was also quite expensive - which is how the story began.

Actually, the story began a long time ago - in the early 1980's. At the time, Jim Clark created a new chip - a geometry chip. It was the first chip to allow people to create elementary 3-d images on computer. The quality of the graphics were such as to leave even toddler's from today un-impressed, but back then entire armies of grown up engineers were drawn to it as were venture capitalists. The idea came together as a company - Silicon Graphics. The story from then on was quite simple - man invents the new thing, VC finances the firm, VC gains financial control of firm, VC fills up the firm with his CEO and his "managers", man slowly gets edged out.
This was about the time when Jim Clark discovered two separate things - his computer controlled boat and Mosaic.
(If you don't know what Mosaic was - DO NOT EVER CALL YOURSELF A GEEK!) Mosaic was the world's first web browser.
Jim founded a company with the guys who had written Mosaic and called it Netscape.

Because Jim needed money to buy his boat, he convinced his VC's and others to take the company public, even though it was bleeding money and that is how the Netscape IPO happened. The rest, as they say, is history. Netscape's IPO launched the dot-com boom. And it all happened because one silly rich man wanted to buy a boat !

The New New thing is a lively (and often funny) book that makes for entertaining reading.