Back in 1921 Veblen had predicted that engineers would one day rule the U.S. economy. He argued that since the economy was premised on technology and the engineers were the only ones who actually understood how the technology worked, they would inevitably use their superior knowledge to seize power from the financiers and captains of industry who wound up on top at the end of the first round of the Industrial Revolution. After all, the engineers only needed to refuse to fix anything, and modern industry would grind to a halt. Veblen rejoiced at this prospect. He didn’t much care for financiers and captains. He thought they were parasites.
And:
After the retreat Ed McCracken quickly set about making his company less like Jim Clark. This is just how it always went with one of these new Silicon Valley hardware companies: once it showed promise, it ditched its visionary founder, who everyone deep down thought was a psycho anyway, and became a sane, ordinary place. With the support of Glenn Mueller and the other venture capitalists on the board of directors, McCracken brought in layer upon layer of people more like him: indirect, managerial, diplomatic, politically minded. These people could never build the machines of the future, but they could sell the machines of the present. And they did this very well. For the next six years Silicon Graphics was perhaps the most successful company in Silicon Valley. The stock rose from three dollars a share to more than thirty dollars a share. The company grew from two hundred employees to more than six thousand. The annual revenues swelled from a few million to billions.
From Lewis’ The New New Thing:
And: