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IP: a comment from Poor Richard re Jim Clark Astride Silicon Valley
From: David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 11:55:17 -0500
From: Poor Richard To: <farber () cis upenn edu> poor richard enjoyed "The New New Thing" very much; however, as with every hero-worship tome, a large grain of salt is recommended. while dr. clark has made many positive, indeed glorious, contributions to the commercial respectability of the internet, a disinterested observer might also note that the closer one gets to ground-zero the fewer things one finds of lasting value (viz., the near-defunct SGI, the submerged NSCP, the full-circle valuation of HLTH, etc). put more simply, messr. lewis does a great amount of lionizing over the stratospheric take-offs of dr. clark's visions without dwelling very much on the catastrophic landings. (poor richard is informed by his colleagues in the aviation community, that if take-offs != landings, then there's a rather severe problem lurking about...) of course, this doesn't make the book any less fun to read -- although poor richard enjoys a cordial relationship with several large VCs, he too enjoys watching them panicked by their larger-than-Internet perception of dr. clark (with the exception, of course, of the unfortunate ending of dr. clark's first vc). s/ poor richard ps: as quasi-disclosure is all the rage, poor richard feels compelled to admit that: 1) he's never met dr. clark, nor any of the "major" players in the book, 2) he's never had any business relationships with any of dr. clark's companies, although he does know a few of the engineers working at them, and 3) he has no relationship to the evil empire, other than running some of their software (he also runs NetBSD, so in addition to being a pragmatist, poor richard also admires the purist).
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