has the air of the Eastern city
dude in the bowler hat, the dreamy, Longfellow-quoting poker shark who
only HAPPENS to know the exact mathematical odds against drawing to an
inside straight. Even among his computer-community colleagues, who are
hardly known for mental sluggishness, Kapor strikes one forcefully as a
very intelligent man. He speaks rapidly, with vigorous gestures, his
Boston accent sometimes slipping to the sharp nasal tang of his youth
in Long Island.

Kapor, whose Kapor Family Foundation does much of his philanthropic
work, is a strong supporter of Boston's Computer Museum. Kapor's
interest in the history of his industry has brought him some remarkable
curios, such as the "byte" just outside his office door. This
"byte"--eight digital bits--has been salvaged from the wreck of an
electronic computer of the pre-transistor age. It's a standing
gunmetal rack about the size of a small toaster-oven: with eight slots
of hand-soldered breadboarding featuring thumb-sized vacuum tubes. If
it fell off a table it could easily break your foot, but it was
state-of-the-art computation in the 1940s. (It would take exactly
157,184 of these primordial toasters to hold the first part of this
book.)

There's also a coiling, multicolored, scaly dragon that some inspired
techno-punk artist has cobbled up entirely out of transistors,
capacitors, and brightly plastic-coated wiring.

Inside the office, Kapor excuses himself briefly to do a little
mouse-whizzing housekeeping on his personal Macintosh IIfx. If its
giant screen were an open window, an agile person could climb through
it without much trouble at all. There's a coffee-cup at Kapor's elbow,
a memento of his recent trip to Eastern Europe, which has a
black-and-white stencilled photo and the legend CAPITALIST FOOLS TOUR.
It's Kapor, Barlow, and two California venture-capitalist luminaries of
their acquaintance, four windblown, grinning Baby Boomer dudes in
leather jackets, boots, denim, travel bags, standing on airport tarmac
somewhere behind the formerly Iron Curtain. They look as if they're
having the absolute time of their lives.

Kapor is in a reminiscent mood. We talk a bit about his youth--high
school days as a "math nerd," Saturdays attending Columbia University's
high-school science honors program, where he had his first experience
programming computers. IBM 1620s, in 1965 and '66. "I was very
interested," says Kapor, "and then I went off to