Slashdot Mirror
I Want to Blow Up Silicon Valley
RomulusNR writes: "Salon has a story and review on "I Want To Blow Up Silicon Valley", a new indie film by a pre-tech-explosion SV resident. The place was a quiet backwoods small town when he was a kid; he comes back to find his home worth $2 million, his childhood hangouts filled with uber-wired techies, and all the unique local towns becoming one big bland electronic megalopolis."
he comes back to find his home worth $2 million
..and the problem is??
-Antipop
Welcome to the FBI profile database, sonny.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Silicon Valley is just an extreme version of what's happening all over the country. While gentrification has some good points, it also tends to drive out low and moderate-income families, which does (IMO) negatively impact the area. Problem is most elected officials are obsessed with bringing money into their areas and don't really care about their current constituents. There are some exceptions though; NYC intentionally breaks up wealthy areas with low and moderate-income housing, which I personally support.
Now for a side-rant:
I understand the director's contempt for the cappucino-swilling, Armani-wearing "New Economy" type. Personally, I'm waiting for the shakedown to hit. I could understand if most of these noveau riche were engineers or scientists or financial types (whatever else you may say about the latter, it does require some amount of skill), but a lot of them tend to be the marketing and PR hacks who have no real knowledge or skills, but still manage to eke out six figure incomes by slinging buzzwords around like confetti.
I don't mind the long-time, pre-Internet "Revolution" people complaining about the changing landscape of the Bay Area ... but I can't tolerate the so-called "noveau riche" who benefitted immensely from the Revolution (when IPOs still POPPED) and are now opponents of development projects that are necessary to sustain the economic growth in the Valley.
Case in point: Stanford University owns quite a bit of the land at the heart of Silicon Valley and was proposing to use some of it to develop new graduate student (and young faculty) housing. Presently, the university does not have enough on-campus housing spots (graduate students routinely get 'booted' off-campus) and off-campus housing is prohibitively expensive. Ironically, the biggest opposition for this new development came from people owning houses in the nearby area ... a huge chunk of whom are either Stanford faculty or recently enriched Internet tycoons. Their biggest complaint? Development may harm the aesthetic and/or comercial value of their homes.
Give me a break, haven't they figured out that it was Stanford (and grudgingly give a nod to Berkeley) graduate students who helped fuel their recent gains? If they want to maintain the local boom, they had better make sure Stanford/Berkeley can keep attracting the best and brightest. Don't want to give MIT/Route 128 a chance to catch up and regain their early lead ...
If you don't believe me about this disturbing trend, go to any of the trendy Silicon Valley hang-outs and eavesdrop on the conversation of many of these VC/IPO types. At one point in the evening, you'll most likely hear something like "God, the Valley is getting so tacky. We really need to constrain development ..."
(This is sort of like the phenomenon observed by many sociologist of how many of the strongest proponent of strict immigration laws are the newer citizens)
Er...no. I AM a Silicon Valley native so I probably know a little bit more about this than you. I grew up in Cupertino (and my wife grew up in Fremont) back in the days before the average person even knew what a computer was. I remember when there actually used to be ranches and farmland between the towns, and people were friendly to each other. The South Bay used to be one of the most beautiful semi-suburban areas I've ever seen, and nobody wanted that to change.
So what happened? The military contractors pulled out in the late 80's and early 90's. The city and county governments, over the LOUD objections of the residents, basically went on a no holds barred campaign to attract new industry to the region. When they realized that they had a fledgling industry right under their own noses, they latched onto it and did their best to support and expand it. And the result? The Silicon Valley land boom of the early to mid 90's. People attracted to the industry moved here, and they needed to build new homes. The government did EVERYTHING they could to support this, despite what their constituents wanted. Heck, a guy I went to high shool with used to live on a large ranch off of 85 just south of town (well, back then anyway). His family had owned the land since the late 1800's, but modern development moved up to the edge of the property and builders really wanted to get a hold of it. When he refused to sell the county did something that floors me to this day...they declared imminent domain on his land so that they could build a school and park on it. After the county had claimed the land and deeded it to the city they convieniently realized that they didn't have the money to build a school or park, and put the land up for sale. Today tract homes cover the land that we used to ride horses and hunt frogs on. Of course, here's the most disgusting thing: Nine years ago they were paid $400,000 for three acres of land that is worth several hundred million today.
Now please don't tell me that people wanted this. The Silicon Valley has an ugly history that most new residents don't want to hear about, and it was all ushered in by fairly corrupt government officials. And me? I went into programming and made quite a bit of money, which I used to move over to the Central Valley. That's not home for me anymore...it's an ugly megalopolis full of never ending strip malls and people who profess their faith for protecting nature, while never acknowledging what they helped destroy. Don't get me wrong...I don't begrudge the people who live there today, it's just kind of sad to see what's happened to the area.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Moderators: this will be a very personal account. It may be offensive, provoke flames, and such, but, by goodness, it is fucking sincere. There is no (-1, Rant) option in the mod system, so please leave it as it is.
The Silicon Valley is a disgusting place. Believe me, I live in the very heart of it, as a grad student. I could care less about money; I just came here because I want to study what I like (Linguistics) with a bunch of amazingly talented people. I don't want to get rich quick, stock options, or a million dollar house, or to write software for search engines. I just want a postdoc somewhere after I'm done with my Ph.D., and a job as a prof. My perspective on SV is that of a grad student from another country, living in the Valley on $15k a year.
Here there's no sense of community, no care for the well-being of the local society, nothing. Just a bunch of money grubbing yuppies that like to boast about their success, and a bunch of poor mexicans, asians and blacks that keep it all together. I know this. I've worked a bit with the recent campaign to support the janitors' wage negotiations. I've met these people first hand. I've spoken with Mexican janitors, and they've told me in their own words, in Spanish, the language in which they dream and feel, how they live, how they are treated.
This society makes the janitors, who are truly *essential* to any society, invisible members. This is one of the most shocking things about SV for me. I mean, where I studied before (UPR), you knew the janitors, they worked the same hours you did, you'd talk to them, they'd have lunch with the secretaries and professors, and so on. Here in Stanford, the profs and secretaries don't speak the same language as the janitors; and more importantly, they don't work the same hours. The janitors work late shifts, starting around 8-9 PM, ending 2-3 AM. The people who work regular hours only see buildings that, seemingly by magic, clean themselves every night. They are totally disconnected from what keeps their workspaces functional.
Here's another story. Last time I went to SF (my easiest way of temporary escape), on the way back, I had the absolute misery of having to sit behind an asshole who bragged to a buddy about his work the whole fucking hour. He looked about my age (I'm 23), and did nothing but talk and talk (quite loudly) about how much of a fucking genius he was at doing Flash animations, how he wanted his boss' job, about how much better he was than the girl that was interning at his job, how much he was making, and how much of a success he was.
That very last bit was not my interpretation; I vividly remember the fucker uttering the words to his buddy: "You know what? I really feel like I'm a success." Here was a guy that, as far as his account showed, had done nothing in his life but stupid Flash animations. If he'd done something else in his life, he sure didn't mention it.
This idiot symbolizes for me what's wrong with the Valley: people making fortunes for what, when you come down to it, are just menial, unimportant jobs, people totally disconnected from the realities of social and communal life, and think themselves above everybody else. People who get easy money, and then just expect that just money will get them everything they want, with no idea about context (the building does not clean itself; the janitors clean it). They live their lives in front of a computer screen and lose contact with the very real world to which that computer is plugged.
I'll stop here because this is becoming less and less coherent.