There are people who use computers. That, in the context of LRB readers and contributors, is most of us. Above them on the informational equivalent of the Great Chain of Being are the people who know about computers: the people who can tell us how to stick an unbent paper-clip into the hole above a wonky disc drive to make the floppy pop out etc. All of these people are now on the Internet. Above them are the bona fide geeks, who are either people who have things professionally to do with computers, or who are far-gone in hobbydom. These people can write code (which is geekspeak for 'write computer programs'), mark up HTML to create web pages, and know not only what's going on, but also what's about to go on. Above them are the übergeeks, the illuminati of the digital revolution: the kind of people, to use one example from Po Bronson's entertaining Silicon Valley collage The Nudist on the Late Shift, who reprogram their BMW's chips to make the car 40 per cent more powerful, the kind of people who, in computer terms, can routinely achieve the impossible.

LRB 30 September 1999 | PDF Download