But that could too easily allow people to dismiss these cyber-savants as mere flashes in the pan.
Personalities count just as much in the high-tech business as in any other.
Just as we would scarcely claim that Stradivarius was a better violin maker because he possessed sharper knives than the next man, the power of today's high priests and priestesses of high-tech comes from within themselves. But power in the Internet age is diffuse. It does not just lie with the technologists who create it, or the venture capitalists commercialising it. But all their contributions are imperative. At the same time it would be foolish to think we might know who the really important people are.