Computer security -- Fiction; Didactic fiction; Privacy, Right of -- Fiction; Records -- Access control -- Fiction
The investors installed their own marketing person to get sales
going and Pierre was asked to be President. At first he said he
didn't want to. He didn't know how to run a company. That
doesn't matter, the investors said. You are a salable item. A
person whom the press and future investors can relate to. We
want you to be the image of the company. Elegance, suave, upper
class. All that European crap packaged for the media. Steve Jobs
all over again.
Pierre relented, as long as he could continue his music.
Max's engine was renamed dGraph by the marketing folks and the
company was popularly known as DGI. Using Byte, Personal Comput-
ing, Popular Computing and the myriad computer magazines of the
early 1980's, dGraph was made famous and used by all serious
computer users.
DGraph could interface with the data from other programs, dBase
II, 123, Wordstar and then relate it in ways never fathomed.
Automatically. Users could assign their own language of, at that
time, several hundred words, to describe the third dimension of
data. Or, they could do it in pictures. While the data on the
screen was being manipulated, the computer, unbeknownst to the
operator, was constantly forming and updating relationships
between the data. Ready to be called upon at any time.
As the ads said, "dGraph for dData."
As success reigned, the demand upon Pierre's time increased so
that he had little time for his music. By 1986 he lived a virtu-
al fantasy. He was on the road, speaking, meeting with writers,
having press conferences every time a new use for dGraph was
announced. He was adored by the media. He swam in the glory of
the attention by the women who found his fame and image an
irresistible adjunct to his now almost legendary French accent
and captivating eyes.
Pierre and Max were the hottest young entrepreneurs in Silicon
Valley; the darlings of the VC community. And the company spar-
kled too. It was being run by professionals and Max headed up
the engineering group. As new computers appeared on the market,
like the IBM AT, additional power could be effectively put into
the Engine and Voila! a new version of dGraph would hit the
market to the resounding ring of an Instant Hit on Softsel's Top
40.
Max, too, liked his position. He was making a great deal of
money, ran his own show with the casualness of his former hippie
days, yet could get on the road with Pierre any time he needed a
break. Pierre got into the act hook, line and sinker and Max
acted the role of genius behind 'The Man'. That gave Max the
freedom to avoid the microscope of the press yet take a twirl in
the fast lane whenever he felt the urge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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