One of the barflies was in mid-rant about Aids and about her fear of infection – I

One of the barflies was in mid-rant about Aids and about her fear of infection – “I say, put them all in a f—ing pot and boil them … just as a precaution” – when a member of the audience sitting right up front shouted, “Kill the playwright!” LaBute, who is 38 and whose wiry black hair and pug nose give him the look of a large, amiable hedgehog, says his first thought was “to get to the exit, to lead the crowd out to safety”; another part of him was thrilled, because “people were listening enough to go out of their way to make a response.” The angry patron stayed for the rest of the play, which is a testament to LaBute’s good writing and his canny view of theatre and film as “a contact sport”, which “should be the most of whatever it is – the most joy, the most terror.”

Once upon a time in the early 1990s, in the irony-free zone of Off-Off-Broadway, the writer and director Neil LaBute sat on-stage doing triple duty as an actor in his bar-room play, Filthy Talk for Troubled Times: Scenes of Intolerance. One of the barflies was in mid-rant about Aids and about her fear of infection – “I say, put them all in a f—ing pot and boil them … Once upon a time in the early 1990s, in the irony-free zone of Off-Off-Broadway, the writer and director Neil LaBute sat on-stage doing triple duty as an actor in his bar-room play, Filthy Talk for Troubled Times: Scenes of Intolerance. His voice is flat, dry, metallic, as ifemanating from an electronic sound box deep inside his larynx. “There aremany aspects,” he continues, “to running a business, but themost central one is staying close to the consumers and listening to what theylike and don’t like about a product or service.”He learnt thislesson, he says, before he began his business, when he was working inthe marketing departments of Procter & Gamble, the giant US company thatmanufactures household goods, and Pizza Hut more. Neither arrogant nor timid, comfortablein his bland Middle American skin, he lolls on a reclining chair as hespeaks.

He does not seem to strive to convey an impression of any sort.All he wants is to get down to business and answer questions.What is themost important thing that he has learnt in building his Internet empire?”The most important thing of all is the consumer and the experience theconsumers have, the experience when they turn on their computer and connectto AOL,” he says. His face is round andchubby, with a small mouth and short pointy nose adding to an impression ofpleasantly inoffensive Disney boyishness. He is 41 but could be in his latetwenties, a graduate student doing business studies, maybe, or amiddle manager from Ohio.It is an image that he makes no effort todispel. He does not play the mogul’s part, speaking to visitors notfrom behind his desk, where he spends his days fanatically sending andreceiving e-mails, but side-by- side at a marble-topped tableshaded by a large potted plant. It certainly isn’t out of characterwith Case himself.His deliberately casual uniform – unbuttonedshirt, loose slacks, sneakers – tells you no more about him than agrey suit would have done (even though, having been born in Hawaii,he can lay claim to some degree of authenticity) He is averageheight, average bulk, average America.

Butperhaps this is an appropriately anonymous setting for the company that rules thelimitless expanses of cyberspace. But the arrival and growth of Case’s America Online company havesteadily raised its profile over the past 15 years; and, following thisweek’s $350bn merger between AOL and Time Warner, Dulles has acquireda reasonable claim to be the centre of the world. Steve Case, Internet pioneer and chairman of the world’s biggest mediacompany, has his office not in California’s Silicon Valley, but inthe small, charmless town of Dulles, Virginia. Until recently,Dulles’s only distinction was that it was home to the airport that linksWashington DC – half-an-hour away by car – to the rest of theplanet.

But the arrival and growth of Case’s America Online company havesteadily raised its profile over the past 15 years; and, following thisweek’s $350bn merger between AOL and Time Warner, Dulles has acquireda reasonable claim to be the centre of the world.
You’d hardly guessthis from the view from Case’s office window: on a chilly winterafternoon, the countryside seems so severe, so flat and – save forthe trees – so barren that we could be in the steppes of Siberia. Until recently,Dulles’s only distinction was that it was home to the airport that linksWashington DC – half-an-hour away by car – to the rest of theplanet. In 1995, the Orkney mine was the scene of one of the South Africa’s worst mining accidents. A mine train fell into an elevator shaft on a carriage full of men, crushing 104 to death.. Steve Case, Internet pioneer and chairman of the world’s biggest mediacompany, has his office not in California’s Silicon Valley, but inthe small, charmless town of Dulles, Virginia.