The new issue of (the new*) _Business 2.0_ has an article about Ayn Rand's popularity among tech executives, by (of all people) Christopher Hitchens.
*this is the first issue since _Business 2.0_ was bought by Time Warner and merged with _E Company Now_.
Here's a link to the article, for anyone who's interested. I'll post the first couple paragraphs below.
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The Obligatory Proto-Capitalist Worldview: Ayn Rand
Why so many high-tech executives have declared allegiance to Randian objectivism.
By Christopher Hitchens, August 2001 Issue
Is it so true, as we are often assured, that we're lucky to live in an age that needs no heroes? Survivors of megalo-supermen like Napoleon might understandably have agreed. What a blessing to live in a society that doesn't encourage the rise of a charismatic and ruthless leader, whether it be Moses or Milosevic. How much more fortunate to be able to cultivate one's own garden and pay intermittent attention to the doings of prophets and politicians. Except that ... isn't there something banal about it? In celebrating movie icons and star athletes, aren't we missing the element of risk and dash and sheer esprit? Underneath the placid surface of bourgeois aspiration, ought not there lurk a pulse that pounds at the thought of the epic? My conclusion is that this pulse can never quite be stilled.
As my first exhibit, I introduce a recent headline from the website of the Ayn Rand Institute in Marina del Rey, Calif. It read: "PG&E Shrugged." You don't have to be a connoisseur of the work of the late Rand to spot the coded reference. In one of her two classic novels, Atlas Shrugged, a masterful businessman named John Galt organizes his fellow capitalists to go on strike, thus paralyzing the whining, welfare-oriented mob that has come to think of the rewards of brave entrepreneurship as an entitlement or dole.