Preface xi
Silicon Valley, Explained: The story of the past, as told by the people of the future 1
Book 1 Among the Computer Bums
The Big Bang: Everything starts with Doug Engelbart 17
Ready Player One: The first T-shirt tycoon 27
The Time Machine: Inventing the future at Xerox PARC 43
Breakout: Jobs and Woz change the game 56
Towel Designers: Atari's high-strung prima donnas 74
PARC Opens the Kimono: Good artists copy, great artists steal 85
3P1C F41L: It's game over for Atari 94
Hello, I'm Macintosh: It sure is great to get out of that bag 104
Fumbling the Future: Who blew it: Xerox PARC-or Steve Jobs? 118
Book 2 The Hacker Ethic
What Information Wants: Heroes of the computer revolution 129
The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link: Welcome to the restaurant at the end of the universe 139
Reality Check: The new new thing-that wasn't 150
From Insanely Great to Greatly Insane: General Magic mentors a generation 162
The Bengali Typhoon: Wired's revolution of the month 179
Toy Stories: From PARC to Pixar 193
Jerry Garcia's Last Words: Netscape opened at what?! 205
A Fish, a Barrel, and a Gun: Suck perfects the art of snark 221
Culture Hacking: The cyberunderground goes mainstream 235
Book 3 Network Effects
The Check Is in the Mail: eBay's trillion-dollar garage sale 251
The Shape of the Internet: A problem of great googolplexity 268
Free as in Beer: Two teenagers crash the music industry 283
The Dot Bomb: Only the cockroaches survive… and you're one of the cockroaches 305
The Return of the King: iCame, iSaw, iConquered 320
I'm Feeling Lucky: Google cracks the code 337
I'm CEO…Bitch: Zuck moves to Silicon Valley to "dominate" (and does) 349
Purple People Eater: Apple, the company that cannibalizes itself 371
Twttr: Nose-ring-wearing, tattooed, neck-bearded, long-haired punk hippie misfits 387
To Infinity…and Beyond!: Steve Jobs in memoriam 402
Epilogue
The Endless Frontier: The future history of Silicon Valley 421
Cast of Characters 433
Acknowledgments 461
Note on Sources 463
Index 471