Tag: digital

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley…a place where frost is rare and snow a once-in-a-lifetime  occurrence; a place once celebrated for the fragrance given off by clouds of fruit petals from the orchards that dotted the region—a fragrance so sweet that the region was known as “Valley of Heart’s Delight.”

And then they came – investors and engineers and visionaries intoxicated with the idea of creating a brave new world based on technology. They arrived in the wake of World War II, a world-changing event that marked the San Francisco Bay Area’s emergence  as an epicenter of enterprise and technology. Despite its many charms, however, the fabled City by the Bay, known for its world-famous Golden Gate Bridge and for its status as a magnet for free spirits from all over the world, was largely bypassed in favor of its rustic neighbor to the south – Santa Clara County.

For it was that place; a dreamy little valley famous for its forests of plum and prune trees, that drew this most recent kind of immigrant. These newcomers were known for their—as often as not— iron-hard egos, limitless self-confidence and an almost messianic  faith in the future of technology. Charged with and by the internal combustion of their own ambition to do something new and (just as often) staggeringly rewarding in terms of profit, these new pioneers bypassed the office-lined canyons of San Francisco’s financial district for the leafy environs of Stanford University and the orchards that ringed it. This area would soon become known all over the world as the virtual offspring of an element – silicon – that was inexpensive, abundant, and used in the manufacture of integrated circuits; an invention that was about to change the world.

On the surface, to be sure, there was a difference  between this boom and previous booms. This one rested as much on the backs of math and science majors as on the spunk of its salespeople. Among the former group were many with advanced degrees in electrical engineering and the brand new science of computing. Many of those who were part of this entrepreneurial explosion were—unlike Rockefeller and Carnegie and the fabled “robber barons” of their grandparents’ generation—the offspring of tree-lined suburban streets rather than the products of hardscrabble farms or Old World poverty. 

The modern world rests on the exploitation and marketing of natural resources such as oil, rubber, precious metals, large-scale manufacturing or large-scale agriculture. This development, however, was something new; for in this one intelligence was not merely an important element in the exploitation of raw materials, but rather the main raw material in and of itself. It was, in fact, the collaboration of the region’s  educational and research institutions such as Stanford University and the NASA Ames Research Center that marked Silicon Valley as a unique incubator of IQ-driven profitability.

  It should be pointed out, though, that this new IQ-based era had much in common with previous ones in one respect, for these new lords of enterprise were no less motivated to win than their 19th century counterparts. These electronics and digital pioneers, driven by the love of the (business) game, a hunger for recognition for their derring-do, or plain old greed, were “in it to win it” (or a little bit of all three) just as much as were yesterday’s oil or steel barons. Silicon Valley promised – and continues to promise – to test their mettle in their attempt to climb their personal Everest.

This ongoing saga of ambition and enterprise is not over yet, and as with all historical happenings, todayś news is liable to be outdated by tomorrowś. What if Silicon Valley had spends the next 40 years churning out vaccines and medical breakthroughs, and other life-sustaining technology as doggedly as it has spent the last 40 years churning out ever more powerful computers, ipods, iphones, ipads, video games and other devices?  We have the 25th century right here in Northern California. Hopefully it will meet us in the 21st century and spend the next 40 years — if we have that long  — to help us prevent future pandemics from wiping us off the map.

Phones…a poem

Phones…a poem

We have more phones today ever, so we do more talking on the phone.

Do we do more thinking too, because we do more talking?

Maybe we do less thinking because we do more talking and the fact

that we think less, instead of leading to our talking less, leads us to the exact

opposite state of affairs so that instead of talking less and thereby creating

the possibility of thinking more we (instead) think mainly about what we’re

going to say/do/eat /watch (as in tv) next without any thought of whether

this/these actions will be good, bad or indifferent nor any thought about

whether this planet-wide explosion of cell phones, smart phones, tablets,

mobile devices, mp3 players and all the rest of this specific, general and/or

all-purpose digital stuff,shyte and whatever else that we have invented to talk

now and forever with every-and anybody else on the planet or on other

planets) instantly,instantaneously and maybe someday or soon at or

exceeding the speed of light until we become a jungle full of parrots (no

offense to same/they haven’t become the slaves of technology and probably

make more sense in their nonstop nattering  than we do iin ours)chattering

ourselves into an oblivion of devolution and rapid-fire texting sans sight, sans

mind and sans meaning.

 

 

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