July 25 - Photographs of prospectors in the 1860s do little to capture the driving essence behind the gold rush. Somber men holding miners' pans and standing next to rudimentary leantos present a compelling picture. Such images, wonderful as they are, cannot illuminate the hopes and dreams that led these men from all that was familiar into a world filled with risky fortune.
Silicon Valley is the site of a uniquely contemporary gold rush.
Like the photogravures of the past century, a video scan reveals the surface. In this case, the unrelieved vista of office parks and strip malls shows nothing of the optimism, creativity and energy roiling beneath the surface. A new generation of entrepreneurs, marketers, programmers and financiers is making its fortune in this valley fertile with energy and ideas. The book's title is based on an incident now grown into one of the valley's more appealing urban legends. A respected programmer, used to working the silent hours of his late nights in the buff, misread the clock in his cubicle.