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.

It was 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. 

Before he ascendance of this area manufacturing and much else rested on the exploitation and marketing of natural resources such as oil, rubber, and industrial metals.. 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 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 18th and 19th century counterparts. These electronics and digital pioneers, driven by the love of the (business) game, a hunger for recognition for their derring-do,  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 tomorrow. 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 such 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.