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Silicon Valley as a Religion
NineNine writes "CNet just posted this story likening Silicon Valley both to a religion and to the Middle Ages. " Personally I find the valley to be a catch 22: the food is great, but the culture leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Case in point: the slides before the movie are all want ads for tech jobs for pre-IPO companies. Dozens of them. Everything revolves around it. I'm not having a hard time at all staying in the middle of michigan (despite all the snow we got today!)
Wow, this is the first time I've seen a "Mod this up" comments scored higher than the comment it was referring to...
Having visited the "Home Office" back in June, I can safely say, I'm glad I'm remote here in the midwest (not Michigan, but a state across Lake Michigan).
I get all the Valley perks, but get to spend midwest dollars.
My co-workers who have yet to strike dot-Com Gold in their previous companies (cash-n-dash and cross the street to a new job), are living in dark, small apartments, hours away (about 3 miles). Meanwhile I have a SV$800,000 house (SiliconValley Dollars) for the low low cost of US$190,000.
The big thing I saw is, coming from a flat, grid-like street system, is that the saying "You can get there if you can see it" is not true. There is always seemingly a body of water or a mountain in the way.
I'm kind of happy I'm not there in the madness, but glad I'm part of the madness with that 2000+ mile buffer zone.
-m
I did notice a bit much of the technology brain rot in SV and I currently live in Washington DC and feel much more balanced out here. The little known fact is that there is a very vibrant technology culture out here, but it doesn't dominate the cultural scene... it compliments it.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
Silicon Valley culture?? I've lived in Sunnyvale, Fremont and now San Francisco. The entire Penninsula from San Jose up towards Daly City is a cultural wasteland.
There's a lot of ethnicities mixed in and around that area, but they're all focused on making the big bucks.
Performing arts is limited to huge concerts at the Shoreline.
I haven't eaten at any restaurant in the Valley with decent food, service and ambiance with the exception of a few in downtown Palo Alto. And the restaurants in downtown Palo Alto are populated almost universally by status-/money-grubbing social climbers.
Most people work so hard and long they have little time to appreciate or contribute anything that I would call "culture". And when the dot-com'ers take a day off, they talk about work.
I work at a company called Woosh! and the only reason I tolerate Sunnyvale is because our CEO explicitly rejects the money-grubbers and those that are "cultural tofu". So we've got a spicy good mix at our office. That's the exception rather than the rule.
Now, if you don't mind, I need to go comute fourty miles. -Phbbt!-
If you do move to SF, you should consider SanFran. Since BART (think above ground subway, except where it goes under the Bay) runs through Berkeley, you can walk to a station and be in downtown SF in under 30 mins without ever seeing a brakelight or putting up with exhaust fumes.
:-)
So are you recommending living in SF or working in SF? Your comment sounds like your recommending working in SF, but then you mention Berkeley housing costs.
cpeterso
I like that idea. Our company is very PC (and proud of its rating in Working Mother magazine's best places to work list. Of course, they'd probably replace them with 5' cube walls rather that 7' cube walls, so maybe I'll just keep my mouth shut (and my head down).
--
--
E_NOSIG
I spent last summer in the Valley. It was interesting, yes -- but I'm now telecommuting from Chico, CA, and don't particularly want to go back.
There was quite a bit to leave a bad taste in my mouth -- the traffic, the cost of living, the overall size of the place. The funny part, though, is how I didn't really appreciate what I was missing 'till I came back and spent some time going for a walk through Bidwell Park (one of California's largest municipal parks, including lots of excellent mountain biking area, starting just a block away from my home!) and watching the reactions of my friends from work on seeing the size of the house I and a few friends are renting for less than a Silicon Valley one-bedroom apartment.
However, the Valley's proponents do have one thing right -- it *is* where everything happens, and there's a lot of good talent there; prior to my visit I'd never met so many skilled engineers in one place. That's why, if I were running a tech company, I'd have an office in the valley, and another (large) engineering center or two off in a smaller, cheaper area like Chico. I'm making less than half what I made in the Valley right now, but my quality of life is far better. I suspect there are others who'd be glad to make the same kind of choice.
(Not that there aren't tech jobs that pay better than half Valley wages in Chico -- I'm just doing the part-time telecommuting thing for a bit).
I live and work in Orlando Florida (BlackRat Village) and it's fine right here, thank you. Every time I've chased a lead to Boston or the West Coast, and especially Silicon Valley, is that I'm somehow already rich enough to live there. I mean, how else can I understand how I get salary offers that would allow me to live like a king anywhere else except in Silicon Valley?
The other kicker is I did work for a dot-com based out of Boston. They have an Orlando office, and I went to work for them in February 2000. By May 2000 I had gone back to work for the company I was working at previously. While there I watched the stock rise then crash, I got to do lots and lots of travel (which was not supposed to happen), and in general I learned that the grass is not greener on the dot-com pastures. BTW, the former dot-com employer's stock hit a high of $86 dollars in March and is now trading around $3. Their earnings didn't meet expectations, and they had layoffs in September. My old employer gave me back my salary plus a reasonable raise (but not at the crazy heights the dot-com company gave me). The dot-com itch has definately died for me.
Having grown up in Silicon Valley... it's really sad to see the changes that have gone thru the area in the last 10 or so years.. People have become more and more obsessed with money. I've never seen such a concentration of luxury cars, sports cars, where 10 years ago, maybe 1 in 10 cars you'd see on the road was a BMW or mercedes, nowadays they are more prevalent(not counting SUV's). Money and status have become the driving force here in Silicon Valley. What's weird also the reputation that we have outside the valley, when most of these people that give Silicon Valley a bad name (as far as greed and such) are not really from here, this is just where they made their money.
And this obsession with money has driven the cost of living way up in the area, so much so, that even the cream of the crop, coming out of the great schools in the area can't afford to live in the neighborhoods they grew up in.
(Anyone know of a nice 3 bedroom+2bath in Santa Clara county for under $360k?)
This is a fair response, and you are right to point it out. (I should add that you should crucify some former 'civic boosters' on the tree as you go ;)). But the pressure put on people to sell their land to developers was absolutely incredible. It went so far, cities were pressured by developers to condemn agricultural land under their powers of eminent domain as a public nuisance (people didn't like dust on their cars etc). It is too much to expect people to continue to resist indefinitely under the weight of community formed by vast numbers of new arrivals (and their money). With all respect, you are blaming the victim. Just ask the Native Americans.
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
I live in Hayward which is definitely working class, but not unsafe. Crime here may be higher than Fremont to the south (I haven't looked at statistics, but that seems to be the general feeling), but that is probably more due to Fremont having a really massive police force than anything wrong with Hayward.
The commute isn't particularly good though unless you can commute by rail (either to the city ~30m on Bart, or Santa Clara/San Jose ~35m on Amtrak); the east shore freeway and bridges are all parking lots.
Median home price in Hayward I'd guess to be about $300k, maybe $350k, but the neighborhoods are really quite varied. I live up in the hills just north of CSU-Hayward which has a nice 5 mile green trail loop up into the hills, and several hundred acres of Garin Regional Wilderness and Pioneer Creek Preserve with more hiking trails. My wife and I tend to get out on the trails on our horses every couple of weeks with a picnic lunch or something, and look down on the valley and bay with great appreciation to be up above the smog, endless buildings, and busy streets.
Two or three years ago you could have gotten a townhouse south of mission in SF for reasonably cheap if the city is more your style, but the city is becoming gentrified extremely quickly so I don't think that is entirely possible any longer.
I guess if I were looking for a place on the peninsula I'd probably look in one of the areas that has a reputation for being dangerous, but is in a really key location where the situation is bound to improve in the next couple of years. Then work with local government to insist that it does improve.
No one wants to move in to a dangerous neighborhood, but then two years later, SOMA is suddenly the hot spot to live in.
Ah well, it is hard to predict.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
This place is an environmental disaster. The air always smells like it is on fire; 365 days a year. Your lung capacity will drop precipitously as you hoover up buckets of PM10 and diesel exhaust while stuck in traffic on 280, 880 and 101.
Yet, ironically, you can't smoke in bars. I mean, if you gave a damn abou tyour health, what are you doing in a bar in the first place?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
While I completely agree with you (this will make me sound like a zealot myself, however I am not), look at the other side of the spectrum.
...without particular regard to temporal factors such as schedule, market, or even plebeian usability concerns
Most commercial software houses break these rules too. US flavored capitalism seeks to maximize profit, shorting anything else it can get away with.
It's unfortunate that noone can seem to find middle ground.
move to San Francisco for a web job, but after having a stint in Monterey I knew that no matter what the hype is about CA, they don't like outsiders.
Give me sweet home Chicago anyday, even when it's 20 below!
My hypothesis regarding monkeys and typewritters revolves around the concept of broken typewritters and smeared feces on
One of my former co-workers, who left Phoenix early this year to move to San Francisco, came to visit today.
He had borrowed (not rented!) a car to drive while
visiting. He told us he had to leave his truck
(very recently bought, still making payments!) because... he can't get parking.
It's hard for me to even conceive of a residential
situation that doesn't include parking space. This certainly rules out the project car, the trailer for the motorcycle, the jetski...
I should mention that the price my former co-worker is paying for rent is about 4 times
the mortgate payment on a 3 bedroom 2 bath house
in Dallas.
I think what's even more unbelievable is that despite the reality of the situation, people are
*STILL* flocking there. The funny thing is, relatively few of them are making enough to save
while living on a disposable income; much less becoming "dotcom billionaires."
There has to be a reckoning sooner or later.
What *really* scares me though, is the sheer numbers of people recently relocated to San Fran,
since August 1989, if you get my drift.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
- This place is an environmental
disaster. The air always smells like it
is on fire; 365 days a year. Your lung
capacity will drop precipitously as you
hoover up buckets of PM10 and diesel
exhaust while stuck in traffic on 280,
880 and 101.
- The corporate culture, particularly
the management culture, is far more
relaxed and easy-going than on the East
Coast. If you are a tech worker you had
better know your shit, though, because
your aptitude will be tested to the nth
degree by the best tech minds
around.
- There is almost no real culture at
all. San Jose is a dull, drab city. The
Valley is basically a big strip mall
sprinkled with office parks. Palo Alto
(University Ave. near Stanford) is about
the only decent place to spend an
evening out.
- You can't afford to buy a house here,
and if you could, you would be a fucking
idiot to pay these prices to live in a
toxic strip mall.
- There are huge amounts of money
floating around. If you have half an
idea and know a blow-dried marketing guy
with some kind of pedigree you can get
funded -- dot bomb or no dot bomb.
- The weather is temperate and it sunny almost all the time, so
you'll have a nice tan to go with your
hacking cough.
My advice to anyone making the move is to carefully save whatever you can after paying your ridiculous rent, nurture your stock options with TLC and get the fuck outta dodge before you get cancer.If Silicon Valley represents the future of America, not to mention the world, then we are all pretty much screwed.
Night
Our Father which art in Redmond,
Hallowed be thy name,
Thy Kingdom come, on Slashdot as it is in Redmond
Give us this day our daily Bootup,
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Linux:
For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, for ever. Amen.
Windows 2000 : Buy into [mental] stability today.
If you think the food in SF better than in NYC, I can only see two options:
1- You don't know NYC.
2- You're insanely biased.
This has created a huge amount of discontentment among those that somehow failed to attain the riches of their neighbors. A lot of complaints are simply because of this reason. As an example, a number of people make the comment that rich people buy flashy cars. Actually, the reverse is true. I don't know of anybody with a car payment. Whereas elsewhere in the country people try to buy the most expensive cars possible as part of this dominance-games thing, people in Silicon Valley tend to buy relatively cheap cards. By that, I mean, they buy a BMW 535i for $50k rather than a Ferrari at $200k. It's just that when you are spending $2k/month on a 1-bedroom apartment, the BMW doesn't look all that expensive. It's just that other people who didn't luck into options will find that to be a "flashy" car.
Nine out of every ten startups will fail, the tenth one will make you pretty rich. You can't know ahead of time which is which. If you want to come to the Bay Area, you've got lots of startups to choose from; they'll gladly hire you. However, if you will become bitter and unhappy because after ten years you still aren't fabulously wealthy, then you probably shouldn't come.
Silicon Valley is no more different than any other high-tech area. It is a bit more concentrated, and a bit less structured, but there is no great religious experience awaiting anybody here. As they say in Star Wars: the only thing here is what you bring with you. Personally, I spend more time on the Internet than I do physically in the valley, so it makes little difference to me.
In any case, these anthropologists remind me of JohnKatz: they can hear the words spoken by the geeks, but they cannot understand the meaning. They try to repeat the words, but it seems disjointed. They think that technology is a religion/politics/etc. when it isn't. However, technology gives you a view into the human condition that other's cannot see. (I.e. the voting problems in Florida are clearly a failure of technology and have nothing to do with "the will of the people" or the electoral college). Since other's cannot see this perspective, they think it is some religious fervor; it isn't.
> Wow, this is the first time I've seen a "Mod this up" comments scored higher than the comment it was referring to
I'm surprised too. Probably won't survive metamoderation, though.
If wonder if this will incite karma whores to include references to sed & other UNIX commands in their posts.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
I haven't seen it, but there is an independent film called "I Want To Blow Up Silicon Valley" that attempts to capture the feeling of Bay Area locals being run out of their own town.
The film shows a local perspective of the technology culture which has overwhelmed Northern California. Rob Logan returns to this place he grew up in to find an old flame. Instead, he finds a place he doesn't recognize quickly becoming a place he doesn't like. He decides he has to set up a "super highway" roadblock to disrupt this "progress" from being transmitted any further. The green hills overlooking the rapidly expanding concrete jungle of Silicon Valley were once the stomping grounds of hippies and Hell's Angels on Harleys. Now they are overrun by latte-drinking, keyboard tapping yuppies on their ten-speeds."
cpeterso
I'm not having a hard time at all staying in the middle of michigan (despite all the snow we got today!)
Well, no shit, Taco. You've got millions of SlashBucks(TM).
***
I wonder how much of the "internet revolution" is really centered around Silicon VAlley. Sure, there's an unlimited supply of companies, buzzwords and tech themes there, but most of what's really relevant seems to come from all over the world...
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
I live and work in the Bay Area - though not actually in Silicon Valley, but my experience still fits the Valley experience.
The Bay Area has the highest cost of living in the country, having surpassed Hawaii this year.
Rent is too damn high. I pay more than $1600/month for a two bedroom apartment. I would love to live closer to The City, but I can't afford it unless I lived in a neighborhood that would be dangerous at night. No thanks.
Don't bother driving. Can you say "parking lot". I made it a point to find a apartment near BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit - the train). My commute is 1 hour and 15 minutes or more. It costs $4.05 each way. That's $8.10 per day or $40.50 each week. Which averages about $175/month.
If I drove in, my commute would be at least 2 hours each way, probably more. I would have to pay for parking. About $175 to $200 per month.
Gas for the car is outrageous. I pay about $2.00 per gallon. When I heard on the news that the average gas price had gone up to $1.50, I could only dream of paying so little. Insurance is also overpriced - and required by law.
I would love to buy a house, but don't see any chance of it happening here. The medium home price is half million dollars - that's right $500,000. Two blocks from my work are new condos that are starting at $700,000.00. I have no idea how many rooms that gets you. When we are ready to buy a house, we will probably move to another state (if I can find the right job).
On the plus side: Great restaraunts, clubs, theaters. But don't try smoking inside of any building except a private home - not even bars.
I love living here and my company is great, but I can't afford to work for them anymore. I either need to find a better paying job or move to another city.
-- Will program for bandwidth
That crowd is doomed. Hundreds of dot-coms, mostly the ones based on stupid business ideas, are tanking. I track these at Downside. (Go ahead, click; I upgraded to "unlimited data transfer" hosting.) Once the IPO money runs out, they're dead.
Now that running a web site is a mature technology, selling stuff online doesn't need dot-commers; it's just a routine business function ancillary to the main business. Yes, there are pure E-businesses, like Ebay, but there are very few that actually make money. Too many are selling each other banner ads.
Once that crowd has gone under, or gone on to the Next Popular Thing, we can get back to designing really advanced stuff. But a big recession lies ahead. The whole dot-com sector is down by 1.7 trillion from its peak.
The Internet bubble is an artifact of a change in SEC Rule 144. Rule 144 used used to prohibit insiders from selling stock for two years after an IPO, which was long enough to keep people from getting rich off dud ideas. In the early 1990s, that was changed to six months. Hype alone can keep a stock up for that long. This is a major driver behind the Internet bubble, which burst on April 14, 2000.
Monterey doesn't exactly count as Silicon Valley. As a lifetime resident (well, I migrated all the way to Berkeley for school) of the valley, I've found that there are fewer and fewer folks from around here.
That means there's less and less pressure from tradition, history, and family here. Lots of folks like that, and have made their own cultural enclaves here. One example: the park where I used to play baseball and basketball is now filled on the weekend with people playing cricket. I still don't understand it, but it's cool to watch.
Another example is mentioned in the article: There's not much entrenched opposition to the gay lifestyle; in general, I'd say there's more pressure to be okay with it than to fight it.
The climate here is great, but the air and water are both warmer as you move down the left coast.
There's lots of diversions here, but relatively few incredibly strong cultural/entertainment draws. Short attention spans (outside work) and fickle tastes are de rigeur.
The valley isn't a land of techno-religion, it's a land of techno-culture, agnostic towards everything else. There are plenty of non-technical folks here still, but between the crazy housing prices, increasingly ridiculous commutes, and the lack of another powerful appeal factor, tech is the surest common denominator.
But I refuse to consider Dave & Buster's a church; it's a community center. Uh, oh...gotta recharge my card.
I've lived in the SF Bay Area for 13 years now and I can very much agree that the '.com' crowd have had a negative impact on the region.
Having multi-millionaires move in next door bragging about their stock options has had a somewhat unpleasant impact on my little street (we're normally a very neighborly crowd; summer block parties, etc, but that doesn't seem to mix well with niveau riche.) And the outrageous housing prices are almost intolerable for anyone who isn't already in a home.
But it isn't all negative. Before the net gained its preeminent importance the valley was already a great place to work. There is a culture here that encourages people to move from job to job spreading technology and ideas much faster than would otherwise be possible.
Rather than have to work 20 years on writing and maintaining a single project you are free to move around and find the projects that are most interesting to you, in the part of their life cycle that is most interesting. In 13 years I've worked on half a dozen projects myself, and I'm a relatively stationary person.
And the projects themselves can be stunningly interesting. I was able to work with CORBA in its infancy, I've worked on distributed applications development from the time I moved out here, and got my first Internet account back in '88.
The only real key to living here is to get a place out of the rat race where you can spend evenings and weekends without thinking about technology. The local music scene is excellent, the symphony is excellent, there are lots of museums, it is easy to get to the theatre for an evenings entertainment, and there are still affordable places to live if you are willing to be a bit adventurous.
So maybe the sense of community is getting lost, and that is certainly a hard thing to rebuild, and something that frequently bothers me; but I wouldn't write us off just yet.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
So, to become part of the solution, go home to Madison or Madras or wherever you came from, and take your cars and condos with, thanks, and plant a plum tree on your way out. Flame off. Thanks for your kind attention...
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
While I love the Bay Area (let take a moment to point out that San Francisco, not Silicon Valley, is the cultural and intellectual center of the region - the digerati of the Valley mostly live and almost all party in SF), and am in the eyes of many qualified to be a technocrat myself, I must say that this cheerleading and propagandizing for the leaders of the "technoculture" really does underline how irrational and cultish this supposedly rationalist society really is.
/. postings but do little to achieve real dialogue.
This includes not only blindly uncritical social science theses (a bizarre reversal of the "noble savage" trend in favor of techno libertarianism as the guiding ideal of (unattainable) utopian perfection)... my irritation also extends to the followers of the cults of personality which have sprung up around people like Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates. For such a supposedly libertarian community, there certainly is an awful lot of idol worship in the Open Source and Internet worlds.
By painting our culture with these mythological overtones we can conveniently cast issues, and ourselves, in unrealistic, broad strokes and self-congratulatory rants about our positions in the fights between good and evil - which are entertaining for
For the most part is irrational, and it is not wise for technologists to get into the habit of not rationally questioning their work. Cultish, unquestioning devotion to ideas (or technologies, or products) stifles creativity and innovation, and can promote lousy, even dangerous, ideas and technologies over reasonable and better alternatives. (Feel free to Microsoftie-bash here, but this is far from the only case...) It also promotes a culture in which those who do not uphold some status-quo are marginalized, and this can be seen increasingly in the "religious wars" about OSes, programming languages, browsers, even games...
Rather than patting ourselves on the back about a new, irrational system of devotion, we should be wondering why we can't advance past these archaic notions of fundamentalism and how we can expect to trust ourselves with powerful new technologies when we can't shake old patterns of irrational behavior.
Even the notion of promoting the techno "way of life" over all else is divisive, and promotes an attitude where all technology is unquestioningly considered "better" than whatever was before and anyone who dares question this is a "neo luddite"
It is part of a familiar, and insidious, pattern of behavior which keeps the powerful entrenched, builds a separate status for a priesthood which can choose between doing the bidding of the leadership or being cast to the confused and "left behind" polity as sorcerers of evil intent... in short, it is no good for anyone, except maybe the very powerful and the very mercenary...
There are lots of good things about the "techno revolution" but religious devotion to technobaubles, technocratic ideology, and various new party lines are not them... If you want to read a serious and interesting discussion of the subersive nature of the techno revolution and how it can be seen philosophically as a means to oppose entrenched power structures, I highly recommend the works of Andrew Feenberg
o/~ we are pissed, we are pissed, we have to resist... o/~ - ec8or
I live here in the valley and I can say that I don't consider myself or the people that I know and work with to be these so called "techno-missionaries", or people who "seek a grander meaning to their jobs".
The reality isn't anything so grand as they'd like to claim. I live in Santa Clara, CA and I have been living here for my entire life. I have spent signifigant time outside of the area, in different states as well as time in Europe (in Bath, england and Budapest, hungary). The best way to describe the SF bay area is to say thats its like the stock market, its very fast with big money, and very difficult for the little guy to survive for long. Its a great area to start out. This is a place where a nobody with nothing more than a High School diploma can land a job as a sr admin or a jr coder. I graduated at only 16 but still I had no formal higher education beyond a class at UC Berkeley that I dropped out of, and I was hired without even any inquiry into my school background. Opportunity is very abundant here. The tech field has alot of opportunity for obvious reasons, but so do the other areas because of the rising cost of living.
Housing costs are insane, rents are even worse. The high cost of living is pushing the non-tech workers out of the area, forcing them to commute longer and longer to put in their daily 9 to 5. The backbone of our cities, the county employees, the public workers and store clerks are all abandoning the area because they can't afford nearby housing. My mother has been working for the Santa Clara county dept of revenue for over 15 years, she never owned a house here and now I have to help her to pay her rents just so she can stay near her job.
Its not easy to live here. Companies are enticing workers from all over the world and offering to pay or compensate for relocation costs. This is making it next to impossible for average people to live here. My mother tells me that half of her dept. has left over the last 5-10 years because of cheaper prices elsewhere.
I don't find any religious self-conscious epiphany from living or working here. I mostly spend my days trying to keep the company I am in afloat (which is thankfully easy due to our product!) and hoping that I don't have to search for a new job tomorrow. Its definately a cool place to live, for those who can manage it, but I wonder if it will remain such a tech-only place when all the non-tech workers have been forced out and have to commute for 3-4 hours to and from work..
:)
One of my most prized "holy items" from the early days is a copy of the Apple ][ Programmer's Reference, complete with schematics and a fully-commented disassembly of its ROM.
If you're reading this, thanks, Woz. You rule.
You could run a sed script against this, & it would end up describing what has happened in Oregon over the last 2 decades. Probably Washington & Arizona too.
This shock of drastic change seems to be common to too many Western USers. One farm I picked strawberries on is now a subdivision covered with tract mansions & I expect is full of newcomers who wonder (1) what happened to all of the native wildlife, & (2) why they can't find a decent plate of angelhair pasta at 2:00am.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Given the various factions, as well as the extreme length of time to become a full "initiate" in your chosen area of expertise, the parallels grow.
All one has to do is look at the Microsoft vs Linux/Unix battle. One Holy Church vs a group of dedicated Mystics. This keeps up, and it will start to vaguely start to sound like Dune.(Not that we need to act out that archetype ....)
Given these parallels, people will tend tyo act out and act upon the patterns associated with religion in the context of religion. Not that they have to, but the stimulus response pattern is there. So it is easy to succumb to the hypnotic pattern.
of course, if you know what is going on, you have a fighting chance to not fall into the trap.
On the other hand, some like the view, and opt for bungie jumping into the abyss....[obscure joke][Prompted by the image of bungie jumping into a oversized bear trap]
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I don't shovel snow.
I basicly work on what I want.
I get my computer stuff cheap and can fidn any computer part or book I want rigth aroudn the corner.
I don't have to live in the south. (No offense to the Chapel hill guy, but I speant 2 years in Tallahasse FL and was happy to get north again.)
In my mid 30s I make 6 figures plus all kinds of benefits, own two porperties and am worth (on paper) about 3/4 of a million dollars.
If the people here could drive, I'd be pretty damn all around happy.
Ofcourse, they can't drive in the Midwest, either.
More preceisely "Half a manifesto" in Dec 2000 Wired. (Doesn't seem to be online, but slashdot discussed it some months ago.) Jaron has several arguments against "cybernetic totalism", that is the ascribing too much to technological culture. This applies to deifying technological culture too.
Bottom line, hippies and Hell's Angels weren't economically productive. They were picturesque though. Anyway, I gotta go put on some nice stretchy lycra, I have to go out for an espresso machiatto now...
Trappists make great beer -- because they've had centuries to perfect it, and the nature of beer is not changing. Likewise, the linux monks have made a great unix and over time it may become the ultimate unix -- assuming we will continue to need any unix. But I don't expect them to make the first great PDA, or make any other stunning technological breakthroughs. The monastic pursuit of knowledge has it limits
-----------------------------------------------
I bent my wookie
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I bent my wookie
Silicon Valley is the only place where your cab driver will ask you about a Sun E10k and your views of open source software.
The valley is a good place if you're a high-tech money maker (eg, Venture Capitalist pig, head of Amazon or eBay or CEO of an industry leader).
For those living on meager salaries of $100k or less -- it's a death trap.
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seumas.com
I don't know about SV, but computers in general are. Think about it; you've got a priesthood of techno-literate people who dispense wisdom and justice to the common folk, and who's knowledge seems divinely inspired. Most common folk using computers involves the ritual offering of the CD, the invocation of the CD-Key followed by the ritual of the install program. People regard the computer itself as the magic box, praying for it's favour, (oh please work, please work, please work), thanking it when it blesses them, and curseing it when, in it's mysterious ways, it curses them. People also ascribe mystical powers to the magic box; it can change their DNA, evil doers can steal their credit card information from it, even if the CC info has never been put into the computer in any way shape or form, etc etc.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
so where do i sign up for the "Church of the Bleeding Edge & Open Source" do the collection plate funds go to the fsf?
.sig wanted: Must be concise, funny, and display my cleverness.
...it's just a bit harder to find.
I've got relatives who do it, though. One aunt with a ranch out near Placerville, another with a few acres in Penryn. Neither of these are particularly wealthy people.
I live in Chico. I don't know if there's any sushi bar here. There are a few theatres... I think one fairly big multiplex... but it's nothing like the Valley.
There's plenty of California that's still unspoiled. You just need to know where to look.
The city of San Jose has been planting quite a few of the things (trees, not jobs) as part of it's downtown renewal project. They look stupid.
And the brethren went away edified.
I'm glad to hear someone with a higher profile than me saying something like this. I'm in Upstate New York, which Hillary called economically depressed during her campaign. Whether she was right or not, this is a nice place to live. Housing is affordable. My commute is typically about 20 minutes, and I can bike to work in decent weather. Yet I am far enough out that there are three farm stands between here and my son's daycare.
With the net steadily eroding our sense of place, those jobs that don't require a physical presence are going to migrate. They will require reliable net access and the ability to communicate well with coworkers online. But they may no longer require addresses in Silicon Valley, Boston or RTP. The overwhelming question is whether they will require North American addresses either.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
If Silicon Valley isn't "mecca for geeks", I wanna know how many of you non-SV folks, when you came here for the first time - probably on a business trip or conference - didn't take a drive and get yer picture taken in front of the Nutscrape fountain.
C'mon. I know you're out there. I'm not the only one who's done it, and I'm not the only one who's driven visiting friends to do it. So fess up.
(OK, I may be the only one dumb enough to admit it, but I know I'm not the only one who's done it.)
Yeah... alot of my ex-bosses seem to think they are Gods ... I didn't, and left.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Having lived in San Jose (the self-proclaimed 'Silicon Valley') and San Francisco, I can say they are totally different.
:) Night life is incredible, dozens of very happening dance clubs, bars on every block. The big clubs stop at 5am or 7am, and clubs like the endup open at 7am so you can keep going for the whole weekend if you are immortal. Fashion is more up-scale. Young people here don't wear collars, striped shirts, sport coats, or ties (i.e. no NY style). Lots of leather skirts and 6" high heals for women. Both guys and gals wear pretty tight clothing so you better get in shape. The work scene is composed of a lot more smaller startups. You run into a lot of people. Cell phone coverage is excellent - I don't have a home or work phone and no one ever knows the difference. SF is more expensive than SJ for housing, but it's so worth it.
SF is compact with excellent public transport, a large number of people here are 20-30. Women are everywhere and it's common for me to have 2-3 different dates a week. Lots of gay guys makes the odds better for straight guys.
SJ is more spread out. Almost no public transport. Most people are 30+. Perfect weather. A good place to raise a family, but a shitty place to be 20 something and single. There are a few nightclubs, but not compared to SF. In SJ everything shuts down at 2am and the only place to go is home. SJ has a lot of big mega-corps where you aren't very likely to meet someone new. Despite being "Silicon Valley" I couldn't DSL or cable modem access where I lived. Cell phone coverage is sporadic. Parking isn't that big of a problem, because the city is so spread out. Women? Pretty hard to find. I was luckily to have 1 new date a month there. Fashion is more "business-like" during the day. I.e. ties and suits, and at night. Fairly conservative stuff compared to SF. Lot more porches, Z3s, etc. It's a yuppie town.
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-- Virtual Windows Project
Martin Luther said that we don't need no stinkin' priests to intervene between us and God (no offense to Catholics, but priests probably did not smell too good in those days:). RS, Linus, et al. basically said we don't need no stinkin' corporations to tell us how to code.
The fact that the Reformation was made possible by a technological transformation (the printing press) reinforces the parallel -- the OSS movement was greatly accelerated by the internet.
With so many tech and service workers leaving the Bay Area, will it become a waste land in 10 years? At some point, people won't want to commute for 2-4 hours to a shitty service job, even if it pays well. The United States "outsources" much of its manual labor to the hyper-poor around the world. Will the same thing happen in the Bay Area?
cpeterso
mmmmmm.....Togo's pastrami...man I wish we had them out here on the East Coast. I miss their sandwiches SOOOOO much! Can't get a decent sub out here.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
The only real key to living here is to get a place out of the rat race where you can spend evenings and weekends without thinking about technology. The local music scene is excellent, the symphony is excellent, there are lots of museums, it is easy to get to the theatre for an evenings entertainment, and there are still affordable places to live if you are willing to be a bit adventurous.
Which Bay Area towns or neighborhoods do you recommend that are not outrageously expensive or unsafe? I live in Seattle, but can't stand another deep freeze winter. I plan to move to the Bay Area (possibly Berkeley?) or LA next year. btw, are there software jobs outside of downtown SF or San Jose?
cpeterso
I live in San Francisco. I just moved here about 3 months ago from Michigan. I live right in the city, in SoMa. My rent is $875 a month, which, although higher than most areas, is much cheaper then the $1600-$2000 range most people quoting. If you live in a trendy area, or look in the wrong places, you're going to get crazy prices. You just have to be persistant, and you will find cheap places. I love it here. I'm withing short walking distance of work, and I am close to some great food and entertainment. Like the bar, POW! Which is just down the street from me.
It's a great place.. and yes the MBAs who are flooding here I want to kick in the face.. but there's lots of cool geeks too.
Josh
Having lived here for the last year, I'd have to vote Blowfish as the best sushi resturant around here :-)
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
Having lived there for 4 years, I can say that they have the best sushi (The best sushi restraunt? Sushi Expo in San Jose where Hillsdale and Camden meet, a little north of I85).
On the flipside, I can say the housing situation sucks. My apartment, while I worked at TurboLinux, was in Pacifica. It was a very cool town, just 10 minutes from San Fran. 25 minutes from Brisbane, where TL was. Right near the ocean, easy walk to a organic store where I could get the best veggies and fruits.
However, it leaked like crazy all rainy season (winter) and cost about $2000/mo. and was a 2 bedroom 800+ sq/ft. apartment.
I decided to move to San Antonio after leaving TL to work for RackSpace. My apartment is now 1600sq/ft for only $800/mo.
Double the space for half the price. :)
Some data points for those who don't know:
Ciao!
The Doctor What (KF6VNC)
I really had a hard time reading beyond the first few paragraphs. To me, these theories of "technoculture" (at least they didn't call it "e-Culture", or "CyberCulture", or something equally loathsome) seem to contain vague hints of ESR's works on Hacker culture mixed in with a lot of anthropological psychobabble. I spend time in Silicon Valley when I can. It's a nice place. There's some good bars in Sunnyvale. Traffic is bad. Lots of people work with computers. Who cares about the rest of it, really? None of the people I know consider themselves to be part of any "a progressive force for global change". They're just geeks who found good jobs. They're not seeking "legitimacy of membership", they just love to code, and they love it when people can use their work... .edu.
All I know is that sometimes I'm glad I work at a
-- I'll be more enthusiastic about thinking outside the box when there's evidence of thinking going on inside it.