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How Silicon Valley Got That Way -- and Why It Will Continue To Rule
An anonymous reader writes: Lots of places want to be 'the next Silicon Valley.' But the Valley's top historian looks back (even talks to Steve Jobs about his respect for the past!) to explain why SV is unique. While there are threats to continued dominance, she thinks it's just too hard for another region to challenge SV's supremacy.
^THIS.
Computing, semi-conductors and software is becoming a Third World low margin products. Look at the bullet points she has especailly the last one:
2000s: cloud, mobile, social networking
If that's the best SV can do, then they're really behind the times. While they're futzing around with advertizing, harddrives connected to the internet and shiny toys, I have been seeing some incredible technology in medical and bio-tech over in a certain city - hint: beans.
Personally, I'd bet on Detroit for future economic ascendance- at least for the U.S. Rent ist dirt cheap and there's a distinct artsy/berlinish vibe to the people rebuilding Detroit right now - lot's of creativity and pragmatism ... For the western hemisphere in total Berlin is a good bet. Abundance of talent and creativity and a digital culture that is one abstraction level away from hardware (which will be built entirely by robots in just a few years from now anyway) plus a culture that emphasises a post-scarcity economy.
On a global perspective we westerners shouldn't delude ourselves. Far-east asia and india and perhaps the arab nations (after the terror has calmed down and the people are clamoring for an age of reason again) is probably where the parties at in 2-3 decades from now. India is the youngest country in the world. We'll all be pensioners when they'll just be warming up. 1.3 billion fairly well educated people in their best years ought to pack some economic and innovation punch.
I expect the valley and bay area to turn into something of a modern day Paris meets Amsterdam - which it basically is already. A tourist attraction and real-estate investment haven for the super-rich.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I actually did RTFA. The historical stuff is interesting. The assertion that no place else will ever come close is completely unsupported.
I remember reading excerpts from historical articles about NYC and London in economic texts and how they would never be eclipsed.
1. Both NY and London hit certain sizes and then the close interaction (required according to the author) between peoples cannot happen as well because of the size of the crowd.
2. When the prices of renting get too high, the smartest students can't afford to move there, not unless they go into finance (or can live on H1-B wages)
3. The price of water in California is going to skyrocket. That changes everything about the immediate area.
Tulips in Holland (1500s), Tea from Asia (1600s), Beaver pelts from America (1700s), Watches from Switzerland (1800s), all highy profitable markets not only guranteed to never fail by their salesmen, but ones that failed spectacularly fast when the end did hit.
Pretty much right on. Given how much of Silicon Valley is moving to my neighborhood just so they can afford to eat AND own a house at the same time, I'm not really that convinced that the important parts of technology will remain in SV...just the VCs.
i see it as a similar conceit to anti-vaxxers
anyone who grew up when it was common for children to die at a young age due to common diseases would vaccinate wholeheartedly. but, distant those horrors, the effort necessary to maintain the status quo of healthy children becomes all you see: vaccinations, sticking needles in children, strange concotions i don't understand...
likewise, you have these similar fools who see the benefits of a regulated marketplace, but only see the onerous regulations, and not the horrors of what an unregulated marketplace is really like. so they react to the regulations as if they are the actual evil, just like anti-vaxxers
anyone who survived (broke) one of the many banking panics of the 1800s would claim the FDIC the greatest godsend. but, now that we don't have runs on banks, we just have this "evil" "world domination" "freedom destroying" scheme called the FDIC: morons think the FDIC is the actual evil
it's a conceit of lack of experience, lack of education, no awareness of history, prideful ignorance
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Maybe you should have looked after your employees better, and paid them well enough to ensure they'd stick around. Companies that depend on locking in employees with non-competes are bad actors in my view.