Inside the High-Tech Hunt for a Missing Silicon Valley Legend

You may remember the tale of Microsoft researcher & computing legend Jim Gray...whose MIA status after leaving for a day sail off San Francisco in his red 40-foot sloop Tenacious spurred Silicon Valley luminaries and fellow techies to mount an inexhaustible search. Theories abounded. He split for old Mexico. A rogue wave swamped the boat and took it down. He had a heart attack and drifted unconscious or dead into the fierce currents that sweep the often treacherous Pacific Ocean. No matter the speculation or the swelling cast of high-tech elite scouring the waters...Gray was gone and not a trace could anyone find.

If you have twenty or so minutes, WIRED Magazine has published an in-depth look at the incident and it's a great read from the perspective of how high technology can be applied to an ocean search that, despite it's breadth and assistance from..."some of the best minds in science and technology, among them Amazon.com chief technologist Werner Vogels and top executives at Microsoft and Oracle, including Bill Gates and Larry Ellison..." has been utterly fruitless to date.