Geeks

How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet out of Idaho

by Jon Katz

Villard, 256 pp., $22.95

Jon Katz is the kind of phlebotomist Keith Richards might take a liking to — trained to extract, he instead winds up injecting. Katz is attempting to analyze the fact that networked computing makes it possible for nonconformists to transcend the stifled environment of American public schools. He finds two victims of the system, Jessie and Eric, and begins to tell their story. Rather than focusing unduly on their story, though, Katz begins to involve himself, pressing them to conform to his narrow world view, go to college like his daughter, start dating and socializing, and pushing for and financially contributing to a move to Chicago. Oblivious to the fact that his method betrays the oft-trumpeted purity of his subjects by forcing them to his level, he at least seems aware that the book is as much about himself as it is about geeks. The ostensible protagonists are the true joys of the story; they’re sympathetic and interesting and everything else that Katz is not. It’s a tragedy that Katz doesn’t see that.

This article appears in February 25 • 2000.

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