Mad About That Technocracy!

Nan Darien mixes it up with the cyber-elite

I think I mentioned in my last dispatch to you that I am very concerned about the fashion community’s gradual decimation of the python population.

The more I think about this miserable of the jungle—I keep envisioning a gorgeous, reticulated 30-footer being seized midslither, and then Tom Ford turning him into a pair of pants— the more concerned I grow. Indeed, I have decided that the preservation and rehabilitation of this noble creature is my cause, my mandate, it’s—to use the Brooke Astor paradigm— my New York Public Library.

My first step, I know, is fund-raising. Everyone I talked to said that the cause has a nice “eco” tang to it, so the people most likely to open their checkbooks are the young, who care about animals and the environment and whatnot. In fact, my friend Dede said, “Why not try some of these new cyberbillionaires running about like so many wobbly-legged chicks flecked with just-burst eggshell?” So when I heard that the ultra-exclusive conference for the kingpins of the cyberworld, Agenda, was being held in Scottsdale, the golden bells of opportunity pealed.

I adore Arizona, and think it should flush New Mexico right down the toilet; all that turquoise jewelry gives me the pip. Off I went. Never have I seen so many pasty-faced, sneaker-wearing Caucasian males in their early 40s in my life! I felt like I was at a roast for Tim Allen. I tried to have audience with a luminary—an Esther Dyson or a Jerry Yang&emdash;but it was rough sledding. One techie type asked me, “Python? That’s your U.R.L.?,” whereupon I told him, “No, darling, it’s an s-na-k-e”; then I baffled the C.E.O. of Oracle when, as we fashionable folk are wont to do, I used the singular of “pants” to describe a recent garment-based atrocity.

My one lucky break came from a writer for Wired, whom I was seated next to at the Saturday dinner (game hen: very stringy). I could not understand a single thing that came out of this man’s mouth. He said to me, “Hollywired is jacking into a lot of on-line haptic modalities in an effort to reboot into the speech-driven modalities of the cyber-tribe”; grasping at conversational straws, I said, “Well, movie people are a different breed. A different breed.” He started talking about “wavelet compression” and “fractal encryption,” and then he delivered a whole screed about “cellular middleware on the infobahn”—my dear, I have never met such a charming robot in my life. My head was swimming from his conversation, not to mention the wine (a divine ’93 Sauvignon Blanc: absolute butter). I was barely keeping my head up. So, finally, hoping to show that I’m “with it,” young, hep, a “playah” (that’s black talk), I wove together several of the phrases he’d used into a statement that I hoped would sustain his interest. I said, “The fashion world is flaming its own mother ship on the infobahn by using the python as a kind of incandescent spamming.” His eyes lit up. He looked fascinated. He said, “There might be a story in this.”

La publicite! The struggle commences.