????2011年11月12日晚上8點，一位名叫托尼?賴的舊金山企業家收到一個電話，但他并不認識那個號碼。托尼剛剛從好市多（Costco）買完派對用品回來——他和一位朋友計劃當晚共同舉辦一場生日晚會。他把購物袋放在過道上，然后按了手機上的接聽鍵。電話另一端是一把恐慌和害怕的聲音。過了會，托尼把電話掛掉，走到旁邊的房間，他的一位室友蓋特納?比克福德正躺在床上看書。

????“打電話的是伊利亞的媽媽，”托尼說。“她找不到伊利亞。”

????托尼之前從事律師行業，講起話來語氣溫和，當時就居住在這棟位于教會區（Mission）特里特大道（Treat Avenue）搖搖欲墜的房子的3樓。這個地方被稱為“蜂房”（Hive），長期以來都有無拘無束的編程員和創新者搬進搬去，其中有很多人來到舊金山是為了逃離硅谷那極其單調、卻被人尊崇的氣氛。“蜂房”的居住者通常比較年輕，一般都是男性，鄙視傳統的初創企業發展路線——創辦企業，出售，循環往復。

????“在這個社區，一切都和意外之財無關，”教會區一位居民說。“如果你可以創造某些有價值、同時還能幫助他人的東西——如果你做出點有影響的事——就會獲得尊敬。”

????托尼和三個朋友共住一個套間，分別是Adobe公司的程序員比克福德、剛剛從斯坦福大學（Stanford）畢業的學生大衛?凱特勒和Diaspora公司創始人伊利亞?茲托米爾斯基。Diaspora是一個開源社交平臺，很多人認為它最終將打倒Facebook。盡管這四人成為室友只有短短幾個月的時間，相互間的關系卻已經非常親密，他們因為對“數字權利與自由文化” （一場尋求把信息從大型才傳媒企業的掌控中解放出來的運動）的共同興趣而走到了一起。

????茲托米爾斯基是四人當中最年輕的一個，從很多方面來說，也是最理想主義的一個。他的室友們猜想，他現在可能正在手提電腦前面，梳理Diaspora的測試版。

????比克福德說：“我們敲敲門吧。”

????但是沒有人回應，門把手被鎖住了。比克福德用指甲撥開了門把按鎖。茲托米爾斯基仰面躺在床上，一只黑色的袋子套在他頭上。一條管子將這只袋子與放在地上的一只圓柱形氦氣罐連接在一起。

????附近貼著一張便利貼，上面寫著：“感謝大家一直以來的關心。這是我一個人的決定。”

????自殺的意義就在于切斷生命的同時帶走所有的秘密。但是在他死后的幾個月里，茲托米爾斯基親友們始終未能找出這起悲劇發生的原因。他一直是科技行業里真正的搖滾明星——一位朋友稱他為“自由文化領域的馬克?扎克伯格”。他擁有若干仰慕者和一家受全球矚目的初創企業。但是他遭受抑郁、憂慮的困擾，感到自己的目標從某些方面看來與硅谷“現金第一”的風氣格格不入。他的公司Diaspora最后以失敗告終?——它的誕生基礎成為了它的最大弱點，對于一家拒絕為了營利采集用戶個人數據的社交網絡，你又能如何追求商業化？

????At 8 p.m. on Nov. 12, 2011, a San Francisco entrepreneur named Tony Lai received a call from a number he did not recognize. Lai had recently returned from a trip to Costco to pick up party supplies -- he and a friend had planned a joint birthday bash that night -- and he set down his bags in the hallway and pressed the answer button on his phone. The voice on the other end was panicked, afraid. After a while, Lai hung up and walked to the next room, where one of his roommates, Gardner Bickford, was lying in bed, reading.

????"That was Ilya's mom," Lai said. "She can't reach Ilya."

????Lai, a soft-spoken former lawyer, was then living on the third floor of a shambling house on Treat Avenue in the Mission. The Hive, as the place is known, has long played host to a rotating cast of free-spirited programmers and innovators, many of whom come to San Francisco to escape what they regard as the stultifying atmosphere of Silicon Valley proper. The residents of the Hive tend to be young and male, and disdainful of the traditional startup route: build, sell, repeat.

????"In this community it's not about the windfalls," says one Mission resident. "If you can create something of value that helps other people -- if you can make an impact -- that's what garners respect."

????Lai shared his apartment with three friends: Bickford, a coder at Adobe (ADBE); David Kettler, a recent graduate of Stanford; and Ilya Zhitomirskiy, the co-founder of Diaspora, an open-source social network that many believed could eventually topple Facebook (FB). Although they had been roommates for only a few short months, the four men had become extremely close, bonding over their interest in digital rights and free culture, a movement which seeks to "liberate" information from the grips of big media companies.

????At 21, Zhitomirskiy was the youngest of the group and in many ways the most idealistic. Perhaps he was now parked in front of his laptop, his roommates reasoned, hammering on the beta build of Diaspora.

????"Let's just knock," Bickford said.

????But there was no answer, and the doorknob wouldn't budge. Bickford used his fingernail to pop the pushbutton lock. Zhitomirskiy lay on his back on the bed, a black bag pulled over his head. A line of tubing connected the bag to a cylindrical helium canister on the floor.

????Nearby was a Post-it note, which read, "Thanks everyone for everything. This was my decision alone."

????The meaning of any suicide is the secret stolen with the life lost. And yet in the months following his death, Zhitomirskiy's inner circle struggled to make sense of the tragedy. Zhitomirskiy had been a genuine rock star in tech circles -- the "free culture equivalent of Mark Zuckerberg," to quote one friend. He had a cadre of admirers and a startup the world was watching. And yet he struggled with depression and anxiety and with the sense that his goals were in some way incompatible with the cash-first ethos of Silicon Valley. His company, Diaspora, eventually foundered -- its very premise turned into its greatest weakness, for how do you monetize a social network that refuses to mine for profit the personal data of its users?

??? Zhitomirskiy worked very hard but always felt he wasn't working hard enough. And in a place filled with dreamers, where success is measured in venture capital funding and user bases, he eventually lost his way.