This book is about a search that occurs on the frontiers of eco-nomic life. Maybe the best way to introduce it is to explain why Ibothered to write it.  In the second part of the 1990s Silicon Valley had the samecenter-of-the-universe feel to it as Wall Street had in the mid-1980s. There was a reason for this: it was the source of a great dealof change.

Preface xv

1 The Boat That Built Netscape

2 The Accelerated Grimace

3 The Past in a Box

4 Disorganization Man

5 Inventing Jim Clark

6 The Boom and the Mast

7 Throwing Sand in Capitalists' Eyes

8 The Great Brain Quake of August 9, 1995

9 The Home of the Future?

10 God Mode

11 How Chickens Become Pork

12 New New Money

13 Cheese Sandwiches for Breakfast

14 Could Go Either Way

15 At Sea in the Home of the Future

16 Chasing Ghosts

17 The Turning Point

18 The New NewThing

19 The Past outside the Box

Epilogue

Acknowledgments