A Silicon Valley Native Describes All The Ways The Valley Has Changed

[FarCenter]

The surprise is how long a backlash took to come. When I was a child in a heat-hazed suburb to the north of Palo Alto, almost no one had heard the term Silicon Valley. In common with the hamlets scattered around it like points on one of my join-the-dots coloring books – Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Woodside – it was an unassuming place, with pretty, straw hills and decent schools; a good, honest incubator for the aspirant lower middle class; benign spot for Hispanic incomers to land.
Now Palo Alto is the spiritual epicenter of Silicon Valley, the Detroit of the 21st century. An average home costs $2m, despite an eastern flank still mired in poverty, even as rich young "tech" workers glide in from nearby San Francisco aboard white, smoked-glass, Wi-Fi equipped buses, shielded by headphones and shades – a target for resentment that could only be improved if they wore handlebar mustaches and snatched kids' iPods on the way past. Is the resentment fair?

When I last came here, the Valley was still reeling from the great dotcom crash of 2000, with Amazon shares trading at $3 and the fledgling industry on its knees. And although it's hard to believe now, no one was predicting that by 2014 our lives would be very largely shaped here, by an army of software engineers – programmers or "coders" – who are progressively recasting the human environment in their own image, forcing the rest of us to adapt to this radically reconfigured landscape in the only way possible: by becoming … more … like … them.

Yet, for all we see and hear about the Valley's gilded apps and networks, glimpses of the people behind them are rare. Who are they and what does the society they have made for themselves (the template for our own) look like by light of day? A recent anti-tech protest in San Francisco became the first to draw attention from the FBI. What don't San Franciscans like about the tech titans to the south who have made their city rich?

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/a-silicon-valley-native-describes-all-the-ways-the-valley-has-changed-over-three-decades-2014-5

[NYC_SKP]

1. I remember fruit stands along El Camino and how a lot of orchards were still standing.

It's different now.

I don't live there but go through there almost every week.

Where I'm moving, over the hill and south, there's not enough water to allow for more building.

That, and the Coastal Commission and barriers to development sort of guarantee a way of life.

Finally.

[kimbutgar]

2. In the 60's and 70's the area was the country when I was growing up

My family would take weekend drives from San Francisco down there. Cupertino had a place called blackberry farms where they had pools, volleyball cts and a softball field. We used to go for company picnics or park and rec outings.

[Arugula Latte]

7. I grew up in the East Bay 'burbs and it was similar.

There were orchards, horse ranches, open spaces. Now it's just almost continuous development from the Pacific Ocean to the foothills of the Sierra.

We almost moved to Palo Alto when I was a kid in the 70s because my dad was exploring the brave new world of computers (HP) at that time. I look back and think that little did we know how all the stuff going on across the bay was going to change everyone's lives.

[Newsjock]

3. When this all pops, it's not going to be pretty

But I'll admit that I will enjoy more than a gentle dose of schadenfreude when all the smug, self-centered, self-entitled, neo-hyper-libertarians get their just desserts and run crying back home to whatever part of the country/world they were so desperate to escape because it wasn't "disruptive" enough.

More than any previous "tech bubble," many of these people and companies are hurting our nation by enabling a dystopian level of unprecedented surveillance for governments, corporations, law enforcement, and others. And we willingly submit, lured by the temptation of "free" services.

The next tech industry crash can't come soon enough.

[CBGLuthier]

4. That is a rather unpleasant sentiment

I find such contempt for people to be anything but a progressive value. To me, only RW assholes get joy from the thought of economic ruin.

[FarCenter]

5. It's hard to say where in the world the next tech center will be

My first mass encounter with the present workforce comes on a Saturday night in Mountain View, home to Google and Microsoft among others, and it couldn't be more startling. Last time I was here, I phoned an editor at the San José Chronicle to ask where the geek people hung out. "You won't believe this," he chuckled, "but if you go to the cafe at Fry's Electronics superstore, that's where you'll find them."

I did, but every time I tried to speak to one, they stared at their sneakers and scuttled away like crabs clutching circuit boards. They were of a stereotypical piece, though, which is why first sight of Mountain View's bright-lit main drag is such a surprise, because the scene doesn't look American. It's populated mostly by knots of generically-dressed young men, the vast majority from the Indian subcontinent or Asia, looking lost, as though not sure what to do away from their screens.

Later I'll check the census figures to find that more than three-quarters of tech workers are now born outside the US, with China, India, Korea and Japan supplying most, often via Ivy League universities, with a small contribution from eastern Europe. Given that women are outnumbered 25 to one, the modern Valley is at once highly international and culturally monocular, adding to the air of transience. Minority female tech workers complain of a frat-housey "brogrammer" atmosphere within the industry. I'm floored by what I see.

It used to be New York, with AT&T, GE, IBM, RCA, etc.

Next stop is probably somewhere in Asia.

[penultimate]

6. Not a fan of server side javascript, I see.