SUNNYVALE

Techie journalist Goodell (The Cyberthief and the Samurai, not reviewed) presents a touching family portrait as well as an acute look at the social implications of the information age.

Goodell’s story (named for his bright California hometown) opens in 1979, when, after 21 years of marriage, Goodell’s mother tells her children that she and their father are getting divorced. This was no crisis to Goodell, who recalls thinking that “divorce felt more like a step into the modern world than the breaking of a sacred covenant.” But the split proves to be the first of many dark clouds in his family’s future, and Goodell is much more of a family guy than this initial reaction suggests. He documents and tries to reason with the slow breakdown of a family he loves dearly—a grandfather who valued engineering over family, a father destroyed by divorce, a mother who learns computer code and remarries, a brother ravaged by drugs and alcohol, and a sister struggling amidst the confusion. Goodell also speaks sincerely of his own rebellions, passions, and adventures—and of his love-hate relationship with technology. He races bikes, works a short stint at a company known by the “funny name” of Apple Computer, leaves home to work in a Lake Tahoe casino, discovers love and journalism, and continually worries about his family. Founded on family history and set in the accelerating world of Silicon Valley, Goodell’s story is linked meaningfully to the past and the future in his attempt to explain addiction, disease, desire, jealousy, and regret by finding “the faulty line of code that causes the whole system to crash.” And, in trying (unsuccessfully) to explain it all through scientific logic, he proves that love is not a quantifiable entity.

Anyone who has ever had a family or a computer can relate to Goodell’s story.