www.sfgate.com Return to regular view
Ask the Online Oracle
Forget market research, instead try consulting the Silicon Valley Tarot Deck
Tuesday, August 25, 1998
©1998 San Francisco Chronicle
What happens when a computer geek gets hold of some tarot cards? You get the Five of Cubicles. The Hacker. The Ace of Networks.
Proving that even the occult isn't safe from high-tech reinvention, Thomas Scoville of Los Altos has produced, tongue firmly in cheek, an online tarot deck focusing on high-tech culture.
Go to the site (www.svtarot.com), type in a question and you'll get one of 150 card readings based on a random deal. The answers are about as meaningful as the advice you'd get from a fortune-telling eight ball.
For example, when you type in ``Should I upgrade to Windows 98?'' then click on a button that reads ``Deal the cards of fate,'' you could get the following advice:
``Gentle favor is granted this course. A sure hand is needed to bring about the best outcome. Proceed discreetly, lest competitors covet thy progress.''
The most coveted card in the new ``Silicon Valley Tarot Deck'' is the IPO.
``Why stoop to market research, consumer surveys and expensive consultants to guide you into the scary, uncertain future of technology when you can consult the Silicon Valley Tarot Deck?'' the site asks.
Scoville, who launched the site in March purely for fun, says most of the questions visitors to the site ask are tech-related, like ``Will Apple survive 1998?'' or ``Should we switch to Linux (an operating system)?''
One exasperated Valley rat wanted to know if he should kill the loudmouth in the next cubicle.
Based on some other questions, Scoville says he is a bit worried that some Valley types are taking the site too seriously.
``I've been getting a lot of hits from this company called Integral Research lately, which alarmed me,'' he said. ``I'd hate for them to get the wrong batch of cards and make product decisions based on them. They could wind up creating the Betamax of the 1990s.''
He's also gotten hits from Lucent, Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics.
He's not sure exactly how many visitors the site has had since it started six months ago, but it has been linked to quite a few other pages and is making the e-mail rounds in tech companies.
Scoville has no plans to produce a hard version of the cards, saying it would be really sad to see them on the shelf at Borders with ``some kind of slick packaging job.''
Scoville, 38, runs Expert Support Inc., a Mountain View computer consulting firm. He says he's the last person you'd find in a fortune-telling parlor. But he wanted to gently poke fun at the Valley, an area he says is still in search of its own mythology.
``I wanted to call attention to the inherent comedy of this place and time, and its illusion of control,'' he said.