Secret History of Silicon Valley

Yes, Silicon Valley grew out of quite sophisticated WW2 military R&D, so quite similar to USSR actually. I like this talk given at the Computer History Museum about the history of Silicon Valley, which was secret for many years: [this video] You can argue USSR lacked followup demand for computing from outside the military, and that this was caused by organizational issues. It’s probably pretty important to also state the relative wealth disparity at the start of the relevant period, from 1940 onwards, say. Russia was basically feudal in 1910, and it would be hard for advancement to catch up to US levels by 1940 no matter the organization of the economy, and then we have to account for the devastation of WW2 which followed (WW2 was expensive for US, but it didn’t lose industrial capacity except via opportunity cost). I don’t say this as any kind of apologia, but think it makes more sense to compare USSR to less developed countries than US — where it still doesn’t compare favorably in many ways, but it’s far more interesting and debatable.

A California subtlety often missed by those who didn't grow up here (and many that did) is the fact that Silicon Valley started out a lot like the other 'the valley' that grew up with the aerospace / defense industry, the San Fernando Valley, which have extensive similarities, including small details like the Fry's electronics and bigger details like the main drags through town. Ventura Blvd. and 82 are basically the same El Camino Real. The 101 (which parallels Ventura Blvd for quite a distance) is marked as El Camino Real, as is 82 in Silicon Valley. Both have foundations in the Spanish missionary trail. They're basically two sections of one very long road. If you've seen Steve Blank's presentation on the 'secret history' of Silicon Valley you'll see where I draw the parallels. Lockheed Martin, Rocketdyne, General Dynamics, Litton, Rockwell, and many others were once based there. [this video] But the divergence was inevitable I suppose - the valley up north has gotten comparatively nicer in the past 15 years, though, as San Fernando's fortunes have faded a bit. The SF valley now basically lacks a coherent high technology business base and all the aerospace and defense has moved out. It's been replaced by Hollywood entertainment, healthcare, porno, import/export, and a bunch of other smaller industries and some light manufacturing. It's not defunct in any way - it's still pretty nice, but it's just not as nice as up north. Most of the newer wealth is in other areas of LA. Both ar

"Is the U.S. rich in happiness? contentment? My perception is no." Happiness is relative. Struggling to scrape by on a dollar a day, and wondering where your next meal is going to come from must be pretty awful. Perhaps more people should do volunteer work to realise just how lucky we have it in the west. I think that by being wealthier, you can "move up" Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs[1], and if you reach 'self-actualisation' i.e. you are intellectually fulfilled, have pride in your work and accomplishments etc., that that is it's own kind of happiness. I agree that you are never going to achieve any kind of happiness by simply pursuing some arbitrary dollar amount. That is a fool's game. Beyond a certain point increasing your bank account balance is a meaningless exercise. The second and third paragraph mention some things are are an unfortunate byproduct of an industrialsed nation. They are also arguably unnecessary - the means are there to combat obesity, products made by slave labour, destruction of the environment etc. I don't really have a good answer for these. It's important to note that some of these things can happen in a poor country too - I remember in the movie "Black Hawk Down" that the soldiers were admiring the lovely view of the ocean, but they were warned to not go in as it was extremely polluted. It probably wasn't the Somalians that polluted it though! "Your point appears to be that financial innovation (money pursuits) can and sometimes do lead to ben

This might be the case but I don't think that is the main reason. In fact, Europe has many excellent universities. I believe one of the reasons that Europe is lacking IT giants is because investors are risk averse and they would rather invest in tangible industries. For example, in Switzerland which is ranked first in global innovation index [1] the IT industry is almost non-existing even though it has vibrant medical, food, financial industries. Another reason in my opinion is the lack (or weakness) of military industrial complex. In the US many innovations are funded directly or indirectly with public money through military contractors and projects. (DARPA, Silicon Valley [2], Internet,...). Just by looking at patent portfolio of NSA you get a taste of technology transfer with public money to private sector. 1- [link] 2- [this video]

One of the great things about the Corbett Report is that you don't have to believe it, you can just look at the sources because every source is referenced. The case in point over Google's Sergey Brin and the NSA comes from a Freedom of Information Act request fulfilled by the NSA: [link] . The second point about backdoor data collection through PRISM comes from the Snowden leaks and the reporting from the Guardian: [link] . In the video lecture of this post, Steve explains that military funded research from WWI all the way through the Cold War led to the birth of Silicon Valley as we know it today. After making Stanford the "MIT of the West" by bringing hundreds of million dollars of taxpayer money to Stanford for MIL research, in the mid 1950's Fred Terman "encourages his students to leave and start companies" and "professors to leave and consult for companies", and makes his position clear that "I don't want to build production systems for the military, I want to do research. I want other people to start companies and have the military fund them." [this video] [link] Some of Silicon Valley's biggest companies today are the product of tax payer money through the same mechanism which privatizes profits from taxpayer funded MIL research. A prime example is Google. Sergey Brinn and Larry Page had been doing research and building Google at Stanford with taxpayer MIL research money since at least 1995: "In 1995, one of the first and most promising MDDS grants went to a computer-scienc

> Essentially the government has built a surveillance state by outsourcing it to private enterprise. Well, yes, that's essentially the whole point of silicon valley. The government and military fund the creation of startups that have tactical value. Those businesses become self-funding and improve the US economy, which also has military value since a robust economy is harder to attack. This has been explored in a few places, e.g. [0], [1]. But it's not like any of this was secret. The off-loading of government operations to private industry, combined with the lobbying for reduced regulations on private industry effectively gives the government carte blanche with the added bonus of plausible deniability. Whether or not these trends are good has been debated for half a century in the US. [0] [link] [1] [this video]