Jennings, like Harris and Gates, is portrayed as a heroic figure, an ideal type for the digital age. They are all “great men,” in the words of Boltanski and Chiapello (2005, 112): they define, embody, and champion the qualities of those who are at the forefront of capitalism and are the ones up to whom all other actors look. Jennings’s prowess and greatness is traced back to technology rather than capital, to machines rather than social relations; technology, and engagement with technology, becomes an axis of social power, and structural class power is neutralized and recedes to the background. “Probably without ever meaning to,” the author writes, “[Jennings] always lands on the cutting edge of what’s considered cool and now and happening . . . because he’s so damn technosmart and blessed with such sound instincts” (Borsook 1996). The new company he now runs focuses, according to the author, on “technological savvy, and Jennings adds, “We terrify people because we’re so technically astute” (Borsook 1996). Being “technosmart,” “technological savvy,” and “technically astute”—all highlight the direct engagement of the digerati with network technology—concurrently imply the underplaying of power and class that is entailed by business ownership and business management; in the digital discourse, “techiness” topples class.
The flattened hierarchy of the new network workplace and its embodiment in the persona of the digerati entrepreneur are succinctly summarized in two images that accompany Wired’s profile of Andy Grove (Heilemann 2001). We should perhaps recall here the stature of Andy Grove in the digital industry. Andy Grove is the legendary founder and longtime president, CEO, and chairman of the board of Intel, the largest processor maker in the world with an annual revenue of 38.8 billion in 2005, for which it was rated forty-ninth in the Fortune 500. In 1997, Grove was Time magazine’s “Man of the Year.” He is certainly a “great man” in the new capitalism. Notwithstanding Grove’s heroic and superstar position in the new capitalism, he is portrayed in the digital discourse as an Everyman, a little guy; even Andy Grove is a node in the flattened network workplace.
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