Essay on the fall of silicon valley

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.