later discover that the headphones
in Tom’s ears were not connected to a Walkman — or anything else.
Tom just found it useful to have headphones on: that way, strangers rarely bothered
him.) They met again three days later in a coffee shop, Tom hunched over a
laptop computer, headphones on. Will tapped on his shoulder to apologize. They
started talking and they had been friends ever since.
He was quite unlike anyone Will had ever known. Officially, Tom Fontaine was
apolitical but Will considered him a genuine revolutionary. Yes, he was a
computer geek — but he was also a man with a mission. He was part of an
informal network of like-minded geniuses around the world determined to take on
— maybe even take down — the software giants who dominated the
computer world. Their beef against Microsoft and its ilk was that those
corporations had broken the original, sacred principle of the internet: that it
should be a tool for the open exchange of ideas and information. The key word was
open. In the early days of the net, Tom would explain — patiently and in
words of one syllable to Will who, like plenty of journalists, relied on
computers but had not the first idea how they worked — everything was
open, freely available to all. That extended to the software itself. It was ‘open-source’,
meaning that its inner workings were there for all to see. Anybody could use
and, crucially, adapt the software as they saw fit. Then Microsoft and friends
came along and, motivated solely by commerce, brought down the steel shutters.
Their stuff was now ‘closed-source’. The long strings of code which
made it tick were off-limits. Just as Coca-Cola built an empire on its secret
recipe, so Microsoft made its products a mystery.
That hardly bothered Will, but for net idealists like Tom it was a form of
desecration. They believed in the internet with a zeal that Will could only
describe as religious (which was especially funny in Tom’s case, given
his militant atheism).
They were now determined to create alternative software search engines or
word-processing programmes — that would be available to anyone who wanted
them, free of charge. If someone spotted a fault, they could dive right in and
correct it. After all, it belonged to all the people who used it.
It meant Tom earned a fraction of the money that could have been his,
selling just enough of his computer brainpower to pay the rent. He did not
care; the principles came first.
‘Tom, it’s Will. You home?’
He had answered on his mobile; he could be anywhere.
‘Nope.’
‘What’s that music?’ He could hear what sounded like the operatic
voice of a woman.
This, my friend, is the Himmelfahrts-Oratorium by Johann Sebastian Bach, the
Ascension Oratorio, Barbara Schlick, soprano—’
‘What are you, at a concert?’
‘Record store.’
The one near your apartment?’
‘Yup.’
‘Can I meet you at your place in twenty minutes?
Something very urgent has come up.’ He regretted that straight away.
On a cell phone.
‘You OK. You sound, you know, panicky.’
‘Can you be there? Twenty minutes?’
‘K.’
Tom’s place was odd, the embodiment of the man.
There was almost nothing in the fridge but row after row of mineral water,
testament to his rather peculiar aversion to drinks of any kind, hot or cold.
No coffee, no juice, no beer. Just water.
And the bed was in the living room, a concession to his insomnia: when Tom
woke up at three am, he wanted to be able to get straight back online and to
work, falling down again when he next felt tired. Usually these quirks would spark
some kind of lecture from Will, urging his friend to join the rest of the human
race, or at least the Brooklyn branch of it, but not today.
Will strode right in and gestured to Tom to close the door.
‘Do you have any weird gadgets attached to your computer, any
microphones or cell phones or speakerphones or anything weird that might mean
that what we’re saying now could in
in Tom’s ears were not connected to a Walkman — or anything else.
Tom just found it useful to have headphones on: that way, strangers rarely bothered
him.) They met again three days later in a coffee shop, Tom hunched over a
laptop computer, headphones on. Will tapped on his shoulder to apologize. They
started talking and they had been friends ever since.
He was quite unlike anyone Will had ever known. Officially, Tom Fontaine was
apolitical but Will considered him a genuine revolutionary. Yes, he was a
computer geek — but he was also a man with a mission. He was part of an
informal network of like-minded geniuses around the world determined to take on
— maybe even take down — the software giants who dominated the
computer world. Their beef against Microsoft and its ilk was that those
corporations had broken the original, sacred principle of the internet: that it
should be a tool for the open exchange of ideas and information. The key word was
open. In the early days of the net, Tom would explain — patiently and in
words of one syllable to Will who, like plenty of journalists, relied on
computers but had not the first idea how they worked — everything was
open, freely available to all. That extended to the software itself. It was ‘open-source’,
meaning that its inner workings were there for all to see. Anybody could use
and, crucially, adapt the software as they saw fit. Then Microsoft and friends
came along and, motivated solely by commerce, brought down the steel shutters.
Their stuff was now ‘closed-source’. The long strings of code which
made it tick were off-limits. Just as Coca-Cola built an empire on its secret
recipe, so Microsoft made its products a mystery.
That hardly bothered Will, but for net idealists like Tom it was a form of
desecration. They believed in the internet with a zeal that Will could only
describe as religious (which was especially funny in Tom’s case, given
his militant atheism).
They were now determined to create alternative software search engines or
word-processing programmes — that would be available to anyone who wanted
them, free of charge. If someone spotted a fault, they could dive right in and
correct it. After all, it belonged to all the people who used it.
It meant Tom earned a fraction of the money that could have been his,
selling just enough of his computer brainpower to pay the rent. He did not
care; the principles came first.
‘Tom, it’s Will. You home?’
He had answered on his mobile; he could be anywhere.
‘Nope.’
‘What’s that music?’ He could hear what sounded like the operatic
voice of a woman.
This, my friend, is the Himmelfahrts-Oratorium by Johann Sebastian Bach, the
Ascension Oratorio, Barbara Schlick, soprano—’
‘What are you, at a concert?’
‘Record store.’
The one near your apartment?’
‘Yup.’
‘Can I meet you at your place in twenty minutes?
Something very urgent has come up.’ He regretted that straight away.
On a cell phone.
‘You OK. You sound, you know, panicky.’
‘Can you be there? Twenty minutes?’
‘K.’
Tom’s place was odd, the embodiment of the man.
There was almost nothing in the fridge but row after row of mineral water,
testament to his rather peculiar aversion to drinks of any kind, hot or cold.
No coffee, no juice, no beer. Just water.
And the bed was in the living room, a concession to his insomnia: when Tom
woke up at three am, he wanted to be able to get straight back online and to
work, falling down again when he next felt tired. Usually these quirks would spark
some kind of lecture from Will, urging his friend to join the rest of the human
race, or at least the Brooklyn branch of it, but not today.
Will strode right in and gestured to Tom to close the door.
‘Do you have any weird gadgets attached to your computer, any
microphones or cell phones or speakerphones or anything weird that might mean
that what we’re saying now could in
Similar Books
