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Not only are the 'techys' influenced by her, but others as well. Alan Greenspan was an acolyte, and later friend, of hers.
In defense of Rand, I first read her books at age twelve, and it was the first time it dawned on me that someone, somewhere might feel the same way about things (namely, religion) that I did. When I quit Objectivism altogether four years later, it was because the cult of Rand often took the place of religion in many of her followers' lives (to paraphrase Maugham, they threw off the name of god but not the rules nor the morality). Though in retrospect the Objectivists seem strange, adolescent and obsessed (and more than a few obsessive comic book readers among their ranks - not that it's a bad thing  ), I still owe a lot of the person I am now, better or worse, to being exposed to her writing. More importantly, her arguments against certain philosophers and linguists, many of whom I had not heard of at 12, were the reasons I later picked up and studied those works.
The Simpsons did a brilliant spoof on Rand, in which Maggie is erolled in an Objectivist preschool where the walls feature posters that say things like 'A Is For A' and the babies have their pacifiers taken away. By forming a socialist collective, they overthrow the leaders and get the pacifiers back.
As regards her literary worth: the novels are rotten and overlong. Read 'Anthem': it's the shortest, and distills her feelings nicely. |
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