ABSTRACT
The tech industry has seen a succession of youthful, clever, tech entrepreneurs build economic empires out of innovative software. From early examples, like Bill Gates and Marc Andressen, to recent success stories, such as Evan Spiegel and Mark Zuckerberg, boy wonder tech billionaires have been celebrated in Forbes lists of the super-affluent and personality profiles in Time. Zuckerberg—and fictional figures based upon Facebook’s hoodie-favoring founder—have become pervasive. “Zuck” has appeared in biographical works such as The Accidental Billionaires and its filmization, The Social Network. Zuckerberg-inspired characters are found in novels such as Dave Eggers’ The Circle and Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge, as well as superhero films, such as Batman vs. Superman, and television comedies like Silicon Valley and Two and a Half Men. Kelly analyzes these Zuck-inspired works and compares them to the turn-of-the-century stories known as “Edisonades.” Edisonades, inspired by Thomas Alva Edison, celebrate bold, young inventors developing new technologies to achieve their fortune and conquer new territories. In comparing industrial-age Edisonades with their digital counterparts, Zuckerbergades, Kelly shows how both are historical texts less focused on celebrating the inventor businessmen who inspires them than on depicting the seemingly boundless potential of signature technologies that define an age.
