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AUGUST 27, 00:45 EDT

Tarot Deck Spoofs High-Tech World

By CATALINA ORTIZ
Associated Press Writer

Silicon Valley Tarot Page

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) Should you take your company public? Upgrade to Windows 98? Strangle the maddening loudmouth in the next cubicle?

Find your answers in the Silicon Valley Tarot Deck, just a simple click away.

You may not get the right answers, but the Internet fortune-telling site that spoofs the high-tech way of work is a lot more fun than hiring a consultant.

That's the point, says creator Thomas Scoville, a programmer who began the techie tarot with his doodle of a stereotypically unkempt hacker. It was followed by 71 other cards satirizing code-grinding cubicle ``rats,'' relentlessly perky marketers, and technically clueless but arrogant executives.

``This is ground zero for hubris on the planet,'' Scoville said. ``I'm trying to say, `Hey, guys, lighten up. This isn't going to last forever, and as a matter of fact, you guys are quite funny.'''

About 8,000 people have visited the site since Scoville put it on the Web in March. Toss out a question or just admire the cards, which parallel and parody the traditional tarot deck.

Instead of the traditional cards showing cups, wands, pentacles and swords, the high-tech tarot has networks, disks, cubicles and hosts, the key computers in networks. Kings, queens, knights and pages have been supplanted by chief information officers, salesmen, marketeers and new hires.

Replacing timeless symbols like the wheel of fortune, the lovers, temperance, and the priestess, are icons of the computer age: the initial public offering, stock options, the technology guru, venture capital, and the double latte.

``Humble coffee drink, or wellspring of inspiration and productivity? Depends what side of the spoon you're on. Vigor, energy, direction. Reversed: torpor, indecision, cubicle-snoozing,'' is the latte's meaning.

Visitors can submit questions, which the site will answer in a fashion. One hypothetical query about a career change evoked this reply: ``People who believe that truly random numbers can be generated algorithmically are, of course, in a state of sin.''

The most common question has been whether to upgrade to Windows 98, the new version of Microsoft Corp.'s operating software. Some questioners want to know the fate of Apple Computer Inc.

Many are cubicle denizens plagued by their neighbors' annoying habits. One advice seeker wanted to know if he should strangle his co-worker in the neighboring cubicle, whose incessant yakking was driving him nuts.

Scoville said his oracle should be consulted only for technology or workplace related questions. After all, in Silicon Valley, what else is there?

``If you keep asking questions about your love life, you're going to end up with the same love life that every Silicon Valley engineer has, which is mostly hypothetical,'' he said.

Scoville, who has worked at more than two dozen Silicon Valley companies during the last 15 years had another purpose besides poking fun at high tech. He wanted to give a dash of symbolism and romanticism to Silicon Valley, which he sees as decreasingly innovative and adventurous.

That thought led Scoville to the tarot, although he's not a fan of the occult. He doodled a possible card, a nerdy hacker type. He scanned the drawing into his computer and sent it to friends, who urged him to continue and shared ideas for some of the cards.

He did all the cartoon-like drawings himself, even though his art experience was limited to ``doodling in the margins of ... engineering books.''

Would-be consulters of the techie tarot must, for the time being at least, rely on the Internet. Scoville did approach a well-known card-game manufacturer, but he said the company lost interest when it learned he had no physical version of the pack, just the one on the Web.

But the cards have brought him some job offers. And they don't have anything to do with cartooning or writing comedy. Scoville is amused that they're from high-tech companies, which appreciate his keen eye and enjoy the joke.

The Silicon Valley Tarot Deck's Web address is: http://www.svtarot.com