I remember a mild kerfuffle amongst my sili valley friends when this came out, but I never thought to look up the book at the time. In intervening years I thought it would be a decent read but couldn't remember the name or author, so thank you everyone involved for the reminder.

I do remember the shift from eighties flavoured techno-utopian brautiganesque libertarianism to the more modern "liberty only means not paying taxes and letting me block off beach access" style. I remember noticing it around '98, which means it was going on for at least a decade beforehand.

I can recommend Curtis' documentary "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace." (Named after a Brautigan poem.)

And every time people tell me sili valley has always been a hot bed of randian/heinleinian libertarian thought, I like to recommend "What the Doormouse Said." There was a time when things were different.