It's interesting that Ayn Rand makes people so uptight. In my early 20's I read The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and a couple books from her protege Nathaniel Branden. There is a sort of beautiful integrity to the framework of her ideas. Seems many people enjoy attacking her and those who find her ideas intriguing. It's more difficult to knock holes in the ideas themselves. I do think she's easily misread, and her ideas are so contrary to our traditional way of seeing things that she evokes a visceral protective response.
Where I sense her falling short for me personally is in the denial of the human subjective and the metaphysical aspects of our existence. In the above mentioned playboy interview she denies that man has instincts. I'm recently quite intrigued with a vlogger named Elliott Hulse who paints an interesting counterpoint to these ideas. He talks about the "beautiful intelligence of the body", and how in our society we are conditioned to be "schizoid" robots, completely trying to rule the more primitive aspects of our consciousness in the same manner that a heartless rider might control a horse with a whip. Allowing the heart to lead has its place and can lead a person on the most fascinating adventures and creations. I've also been listening to some lectures by Joseph Campbell - again in this same vein of how there are some deeper truths which our ancestors are trying to relay through myth and religion, and throughout history and location the stories run parallel because they come from the wellspring of the subjective human experience. He warns us against taking religious metaphors literally and explicitly because in doing so the conveyed story and meaning is lost.
Perhaps these are the types of things that Ayn turned a blind eye to. But I don't see her as completely contradictory to these ideas either. Note that by taking religious motifs literally, we are indeed undermining our rational cognitive capabilities. I see this as particularly dangerous to children. It is our job as humans to create a moral framework for ourselves. If we are trained that we must blindly accept some dogma and that to resist or question is evil, or that our cognitive abilities are not to be trusted, we then live our lives as slaves. I don't see how any true individualist and free thinker would not find some jewels of wisdom or food for thought in Ayn's ideas.
Re Tex's interpretation - there was really nothing special in her books about technology. The name "Fountainhead" kind of says it all - that the individual, not the group is the real source of everything that man has to offer. In essence she stated that we have 2 choices as humans, to be aware and use our objective cognitive abilities or not. In doing so, we set up the groundwork to create our system of values. Being from soviet Russia, she was very much against rule by the many and the heavy interference of government to control society. She believed in individual rights. The whole altruism thing wraps around that background I think - a recognition that humans serve their own values. This can expand quite a bit I think depending on where you see the boundary of your ego and the extent of what you love or value, such that is commonly interpreted as altruism in her system would be love of an extended self.
