I Thought I Knew Silicon Valley. I Was Wrong

Of course, Silicon Valley was never all flowers and psychedelic. “For all that it may flutter himself with counter-life, make money and purchasing power has always been in the mainstream,” says kapor. And of course, politics of the values ​​followed politics always a strong libertarian strain.

But even weigh Capitalists seemed to vibe with the sense of revolution – as the weather switches to make bombs to do IPO road. When the Internet arrived like a tongue, the ideological soundtrack ear split. In his famous 1996 “Statement of Cyberments of Cyberpace” My friend John Perry Barlow started that the Internet of Earth of Earthwines and bounds. “Your legal property, expression, expression, identity, movement, and context does not apply to us,” he wrote.

Oh my God we have our hopes placed on the Internet. When I first met them, larry page and Sergey brin wide idealists were. Jeff Bezos arrived as a buddy, eager to point out that Amazon employees, himself recorded her computers in place of processed wooden doors instead of price. After my first conversation with Zuckerberg he went to a small apartment with no furniture.

And then shot the giants of the Internet their companies to set up their own concepts of phrases, identity, and context. Those who were humbling lingering uncontrolled rewards. Now they cannot fulfill their wealth sufficient multiple homes, planes.

At a typical pleasant July I met with Russell Hancock, which is a thinking of joint Venture silicon silicon, in the living room of his palo alto at home. He nabbed it during the 2000 Tech-crash; Now you can't buy a hock in Paly without a living of the time-generation. Side and Zuckerberg, unhappy about a single homestead, have kicked nearby nearby, transforming idyllic streets in the supervision cases once.

“The people who do beautiful they really have a great time,” says Hancock. For everyone else in Silicon Valley becomes wealth gap more punitive, more absurd. When Apple had his IPO in 1980, Steve Jobs' was not worth a near-unrestricted of $ 100 million. Now Zuckerberg provides Zuckerberg to Ai investigators that have Mooo's for a one-year years. Hancock Brings de Gini Coefficient, a measure of inequality that is popular, which is popular with the World Bank. Since the '90s,' we went from 30 on the Gini to 83, 'he says. “These are the terms for the French Revolution.”

Another major change was involved. For the longest time, notes Chris Lehane, a former bills Clinton staff who has worked for companies such as Airbnb and Openai, software, software was almost like a fourth dimension. ” Tech Leaders could afford to stay out of the west and avoid politically. But then software products began to break all sectors of the affairs. “These products are physically manifests themselves, physical term rental, and delivery of food,” “Bumping up against existing political systems, beliefs, nice, laws.” Sometimes people died of that invasion. Old, beloved companies closed. Local Politicians were crazy. Around the system to game Silicon Valley to the swamp. If one technologists in the current administration tells me, “realizes the valley now that it cannot ignore politics as a politics will not ignore you.”