When I started temping, the personal-computing revolution hadn’t yet rescued the American economy. The Internet as we know it did not exist—it was something called “The Well,” which had to be accessed by a 96-kb modem and navigated with code. Nor had the metrosexual with horn-rimmed glasses, pudendal goatee and reverse-wind-tunnel hair ascended the fashion throne. Few guessed that clicking keyboards and spluttering hard-drives presaged the splendors of infotainment, info-consumption, info-erotica, info-identity and the morphing of the egghead from social reject to revered guru.

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