71
" You have to sit down and think for a bit to realize what that means, not just for Clark but for anyone with the slightest interest in how economies and societies are nudged from one place to the next. A company dreamed up by a technical man a lot of big shots thought was slightly unhinged, with a twenty-two-year-old who didn’t want to do it in the first place, and another twenty-two-year-old assigned to sleep under his bed, did not become merely a success. It torpedoed investments of hundreds of millions by the world’s biggest corporations and putatively smartest minds—SGI, TW, Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, AT&T. Thousands of people had more or less wasted billions of dollars and, whether they knew it or not, had been following his lead. Then, just as they all ran as a herd in one direction, he took off in another. And within six months he made them all look like fools. It was one of the great unintentional head fakes in the history of technology. "
― Michael Lewis , The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story
78
" Clark’s real estate agent turned out to be one of those loud, garrulous people who, as they drive, insist on making eye contact with the passengers in the back seat. ‘You want to see Scott Cook’s house?’ she hollered over her shoulder to a terrified Mr and Mrs Jim Barksdale. Scott Cook was the chairman of Intuit, the financial software company. ‘Is it for sale?’ asked Barksdale. ‘No,’ said the woman. ‘Then I don’t want to see it,’ said Barksdale. Clark’s realtor ignored him and squealed through this enormous bronze gate and into Scott Cook’s driveway. Out of the house shot Mrs Scott Cook to investigate this intrusion. Clark’s realtor had panicked, backed up and tried to make a quick getaway but ended up rolling back into Mrs Cook’s newly planted garden. There she became stuck in the mud. Wheels spun, plants flew. Mrs Cook was livid. She looked at Barksdale as if he were some kind of criminal. They had to call a fire truck and a tow truck to extract him, his wife, and Clark’s realtor from the garden. The episode lasted an hour. "
― Michael Lewis , The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story