Nick Denton - e-mail from the valley

It was said once of Steve Jobs, founder of one of Silicon Valley's greatest personal computer companies, that he generated a reality distortion field.

The effect goes way beyond Apple Computer. At the technology industry's ground zero, the whole business environment is warped.

Outsiders, thinking of the weird zone between San Francisco and San Jose, usually focus on the speed with which companies are formed and die, industries become hot and not and fortunes are made and lost. Or bizarre extremes of equity culture, in which landlords ask for equity over cash.