Like so many people alive in the age of electricity, Alphonse's life is a daily battle to adapt to everything that is new and learn what to shed from the past. For many, this reality is a curse, but for others, like Alphonse, it is a wonder.
The entire section on the Bell Labs New Jersey campus is depressing, as probably intended. He sums it up best when he says the 20th century has ended. Bell Labs will not be the Bell Labs of the 21st, everything inevitably has its moment.
His writing is at its best when in freewheeling daydream mode where he turns the corporate interviews into a rambling Socratian dialogue.
Coupland seems uncritically in awe of intelligent engineers and mathematicians in a fawning way that makes you feel that the only possible answer is that he is being sarcastic.
Douglas Coupland is the writer for this foray into the inner workings of Alcatel-Lucent, billed as the unknown company that makes the Internet possible.