Here’s a quick take on the “fall of silicon valley”

The digest follows:
- I remember the fall of Silicon Valley.
- People still live in Rome long after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and people continue to live and work in Silicon Valley.
- The spirit of innovation is gone.
- And I saw it get oppressed, and pushed underground, and it eventually left.
- The next Silicon Valley will not look like the last.
- I am writing this because I am fascinated by the process of innovation.
- I believe that one day there will be a mathematical theory of innovation.
- Similar to how Frederick Taylor developed a theory of work, later improved upon by Peter Drucker, and Claude Shannon developed a theory of communication, both previously seen as irreducible processes, there will one day be a science of innovation itself that will continue to get better over time.
- I expect historians will record the death of Silicon Valley in the year 2012.
- Steve Jobs hated oppression.
- He loved using design and technology to free people from it.
- The point was to be busy all the time.
- To teach them better ways to grow and preserve food?
- To make them write software.
- Why not make products for people?
- People that do not live in Silicon Valley?
- Unlike Rome, which built magnificent structures to last thousands of years, Silicon Valley has nothing left to look at.
- Silicon Valley fell partially because unlike its early days, it began pushing terrible working and living cultures and useless, irrelevant, at times harmful products on the rest of the world.
- And people gradually began to see the truth.
- The first lie was that you had to live in Silicon Valley to be innovative.
- The truth is, innovation is everywhere.
- Innovation is within you.
- Silicon Valley does not have a monopoly on innovation and never did.
- The second lie was that all innovation had to look a certain way.
- Everybody knew innovation was a Delaware C Corporation based in Silicon Valley that sold software, raised Venture Capital, went viral, grew like a cancer, became a unicorn, rented lavish creative office spaces, and got acquired by an advertising company.
- The truth is, innovation comes in all forms, shapes and sizes.
- One can be innovative in science.
- One can be innovative in business.
- One can be innovative in storytelling.
- There is innovation in politics and churches and nonprofits and homes and families and communities.
- The truth is, no company grows quickly, linearly, and continually.
- If you are focused on innovation, the company will cycle upwards.
- The third and final lie, was that Silicon Valley was a great place to start and run a business.
- Silicon Valley is one of the most hostile, expensive, oppressive places to run a business in the world.
- Let us take a moment to better define innovation.
- Innovation is the process of taking a thing, or a collection of things, and making it better.
- Ask if it is truly better.
- Innovation takes something that people use and improves upon it.
- Innovation comes from someone pure in heart.
- Innovation stands the test of time.
- For example, Facebook is not an innovation.
- Facebook did not make socializing better.
- Yes. Does it make money?
- Yes. But it is not innovative.
- Yes Amazon (which is not based in Silicon Valley) made online shopping better.
- True innovation, like the silicon chip itself, stands the test of time.
- Tesla (which is leaving California) took the electric car, and made it better.
- That was innovative.
- The electric car itself was an innovation, an improvement in many ways over a gasoline powered car, which was itself better in many ways than riding a horse, which, if you are traveling a long distance, sure beats walking.
- Most importantly, Tesla continues to innovate.
- If we continue to innovate in this path, we will one day have flying cars.
- Next let us consider the culture of Silicon Valley.
- Silicon Valley has pushed long hours, long commutes, short if any vacations, transactional relationships, rampant materialism, and short-sighted, selfish, even at times downright dishonest behavior and reduces human beings and their desires and relationships to numbers.
- Most people in the world do not want to live like this.
- Silicon Valley largely began when one very innovative, very controversial figure, Willian Shockley, left Bell Labs, a hub of true innovation, because he wanted more credit for his work on the solid state transistor.