Silicon Follies [Hardcover]

Thomas Scoville (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2001

Welcome to Silicon Valley -- where fortunes are fast, dating's dysfunctional, and computer geeks rule. Meet Paul Armstrong, a late-twenties computer "consultant" who sits in his cubicle at TeraMemory wondering where it all went horribly wrong.

"Well, I wasn't always a nerd. I started out as a liberal-arts type in college -- though I aggressively concealed this on my resume. Hiring managers don't like it. Non-technical outside interests. Bad sign."

Watch him order a latte from the of?ce coffee cart and poke at his Chinese lunch special while his longtime pal Steve Hall, hacker extraordinaire, accuses him of selling out to The Man.

"When the money dries up, this place will be just like anywhere else. It was never the "place," anyway -- that's what The Man will never understand."

Meet The Man himself: Barry Dominic, the ?amboyant, lecherous, millionaire founder of TeraMemory. He insists they're poised to revolutionize networking with a cutting-edge technology, appropriately called WHIP.

"Nobody fucks with Barry Dominic."

That's where Liz Toulouse comes in. A Stanford English Lit grad and TeraMemory marketing associate, she accidentally cc's the entire company a snide e-mail about The Man's bad grammar on her very ?rst day....

"If only I'd had any idea. I'd have stayed in school. I'd have changed majors. Gotten a master's. Anything."

Welcome to "Silicon Follies," a hilarious dot.comedy of ambition and disillusionment in a land of luck, loss, and sometimes even love.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

San Jose Mercury News An amusing look at high-tech culture from the inside....This phenomenon of our times frames...a host of brilliant characters. -- Review --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Atria (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074341120X
• ISBN-13: 978-0743411202
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,533,020 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Amusing Portrayal of an Era., April 4, 2002

By 

Dr. Zoidberg (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silicon Follies (Paperback)

People who worked in the high tech industry are going to love this book! I've never worked in Silicon Valley (even though I have worked in NYC's Silicon Alley), but still, this book rang so true. The book doesn't really have a main character, but instead focuses on the tales of a few people. Paul Armstrong: a programmer, Liz Toulouse: the liberal arts graduate who tries to work in high tech, Steve Hall: the free bits hacker (Free Bits = Open Source), and Barry Dominic: the CEO of a multinational technical company, TeraMemory. The plot covers a period in the life of these characters in the crazy events which took place around 1999-2000 - the internet bubble era. As part of the story we get to see the environment, coworkers, workplaces of the main characters - the author has truly captured the essence of these. But more than just a very accurate portrayal of the time, "Silicon PFollies" is simply a funny book!

I guess people who have never worked in high tech might not get all the inside jokes (I'm not sure I got all of them either), but I believe they will still enjoy a very amusing book - and get some of what it meant to be a part of the internet craze - I couldn't help but feel a bit nostalgic as I read about the CEO's "motivational speeches"..

The dot.com period might've been an illusion, but it still was quite an experience for me - and I think this book relays that feeling quite well. Highly recommended!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great fun, if sometimes trite, February 12, 2001

By 

Stephen Adamson "Web Developer" (Sherwood, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Silicon Follies (Hardcover)

This book starts out hilarious. The writer's knack for humor shines through. The jokes are scathingly accurate in the portrayal of Silicon Valley life, and the characters are recognizable in nearly any company. With a fantastic robot vs. machine battle and a hilarious system administrator (complete with multiple facial piercings), this book keeps the humor level strong.

Toward the end, it tends to slow down as the writer abandons straight humor and tries to develop sympathetic characters, out-of-place poignancy, and an emotional ending. It seemed like a poor attempt to be Douglas Coupland and capture the emotional power of "Microserfs" which, with such a strong, hilarious beginning, was really unnecessary.

One warning for the lay reader: A person will get a good deal more out of this book with at least a little knowledge of the technology lingo: enough to get the jokes but not enough to realize when he's making it up as he goes along.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, well-rounded sendup of Silicon Valley!, January 22, 2001

By 

Book Reviewer (Eastern USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silicon Follies (Hardcover)

What a book!

We hear about the trends, the business, the management fads that come and go like each season's fashions. But in the end, it comes down to the people, and what we do in our day to day lives, and the peculiarities that make life interesting. And this book captures it all.

Corporations vs. creative, free-thinking individuals, and the individuals winning out. We hear it all the time, but Silicon Follies puts us inside the mind of both as we follow a typical dotcom's lifecycle through the eyes of its engineers, CEO, salescritters, and marketroids. We also see the people on the outside, the liberal arts graduates doubting if they are doing the right thing, and the people trying to save what hasn't been overrun by the dotcoms, keeping the artistic spirit alive.

And the technology, the quirks, the tradeshow panic, it's all sent up in a brilliant, hysterically funny book. The best part of the book is that it's all accurate, down to the hardware that only responds to stuffed animals and the packed Chinese restaurants.

But it's more than a dot.comedy. The book has wonderfully poignant moments which make it that much more real. There's a hint of sadness behind the humor, the touch of what has been lost, that makes us appreciate what we do have, and tells us to enjoy it while we can.

I'm waiting for the sequel!