CONTINENTAL DIVIDE

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The incomprehension in Washington and the rest of the country about the world of high tech is partly the techies' own fault. What, for example, do these companies do exactly? Well, Pangea has developed some kind of software that is used to sort through all the information that's coming out about human genes, in order to speed up the development of new drugs. Or something. "Industrial Strength Bioinformatics" is the company's slogan. Its product, styled GeneWorld 2.0, "gives you the industrial-strength capacity you need when sequence data production exceeds analytical throughput." (Don't you hate it when that happens?) @Large's first product, Sasson says with a smile, is "one of the simplest for marketing people to explain." And he's right, sort of. It's software that enables employees to file expense reports on a corporate intranet. (What's an intranet? Ask Trent Lott.) The sales brochure promises a "Thin Client" with "Rich Java GUI," which sounds like it's pushing a dietetic dessert.

The Other Beltway's language does have the edge in one respect: informality. I felt no qualm about E-mailing "Hi Joel" to someone I had never met. ("Hi Jon," I E-mailed to Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley when he announced that he'd gone online, adding helpfully, "This is the proper form of salutation in cyberspace." Yardley answered, jokingly, "Dear Mr. Kinsley: This is the proper form of salutation in Washington.") The same informality applies to dress, which in this world--where style is set by barely socialized young computer geeks--has moved beyond the studied informality of "business casual" to truly casual. Inside the Washington Beltway, meanwhile, people still swim through swamplike summer heat and humidity wearing dark wool suits and damp white shirts, their air supply constricted by a tight Windsor knot.

Neither Bellenson nor Sasson spends any time in Washington. Sasson has been there twice as a tourist and once on business when he worked for Bechtel. "It reminded me of Rome," he says, meaning the pomp and not the classical beauty of its architecture. He adds that it "has no relevance to high-tech industries." Bellenson has been there a few times for conferences and "sensed it's a closed environment...I was struck by how oblivious they are to the conditions of the poor, though they work with the poorest of the country right nearby." Sasson describes himself firmly and comfortably as "a liberal"--which itself distinguishes him from people in Washington these days--but says he is not politically active, "beyond voting." Bellenson is "not interested in conventional politics" and would like "a politics that would facilitate social progress." He says these progressive sentiments make him "an aberration" in Silicon Valley, but they lead, in any event, to the same result as Sasson's lack of interest: no involvement in electoral politics. Bellenson also feels, for all his radical sentiments, that government has nothing to contribute to the development of his business, which is his real passion, and can only get in the way.