Can I refer to a company based in Redwood City as a "Silicon Valley" company? For reasons too obscure to explain, it would help if I could. But if that's not accurate, I'll have to call it "Bay Area" or just leave that bit out.
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One of the issues is that there isn't really a single entity that is, or speaks for, "Silicon Valley".
There are trade associations and local chambers of commerce, but the elephants in the room are a relative handful of monopolists whose business model relies on them buying out potential competition and innovative ideas (which are often the same).
Alphabet (Google's parent) have made noises about becoming more involved in health. If they bought these people out, they would get more attention.
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Originally posted by ursus arctos View PostOne of the issues is that there isn't really a single entity that is, or speaks for, "Silicon Valley".
There are trade associations and local chambers of commerce, but the elephants in the room are a relative handful of monopolists whose business model relies on them buying out potential competition and innovative ideas (which are often the same).
Alphabet (Google's parent) have made noises about becoming more involved in health. If they bought these people out, they would get more attention.
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Apparently, the first reference was in the early 70s but the area has been home to a lot of electronics and IT research for as long as those things have existed, fueled largely by the Federal Government, including the military, and Stanford's very pro-business attitude, among other things.
I recall that on one of the first episodes of Knight Rider, Devon tells Michael he needs to go up to a place called "Silicon Valley" to investigate whatever skullduggery was going on. I recall watching that again for nostalgia purposes in the 90s and realizing that the way he said it meant that the writers assumed that most people outside California hadn't heard the term before. That was probably 1982-83ish. I knew Atari was in Sunnyvale, of course, but don't recall it being talked about as really THE hub of computer technology until sometime in the mid 90s. It certainly wasn't cool until that time. Before that, the image I had of it was of the big defense contractors and big companies like HP. And the people I knew who went to work for them were dads with pocket protectors on their shirts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley
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Originally posted by caja-dglh View Post
It is a state of mind.
Are there other "Silicon" geographic terms? I know there's Silicon Alley, and now around Santa Monica/Venice/Marina Del Rey there is "Silicon Beach". Any others?
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Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View PostThey're a start-up making portable ultrasound, which is potentially very useful, unlike most of the apps and AI-based juicing machines or whatever the hell that seem to be the main product of SV.
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Salt Lake City has 'Silicon Sands'.
And yes, Redwood City is the north of Proper Silicon Valley, as originally described, basically the interior coastal corridor that runs from Redwood City to San Jose. That general area was where the majority of the old-school tech companies were based, and yes, they were very much the province of the bespectacled, button-up, pocket-protector nerd. Loads of UNIX usage, actual hardware development, etc.
San Francisco, even in the Web 1.0 days, was definitely not Silicon Valley, it's something that shifted northward sometime over the last 15 years as tech companies migrated to the city itself, probably because the "coolness" and immense amounts of cash pumped into the industry increased and people wanted to work somewhere other than a strip-mall-esque front in Sunnyvale. It will be interesting to see again how it changes during- and (hopefully) post-covid as the necessity of being in the ridiculously expensive downtown SF area gets questioned.
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Originally posted by MsD View Post
Yes, I think that was the one C-D referred to upthread.
In the late-80s/early-90s I used to work just up the road from the Old St. Roundabout, as we used to refer to it before it got its fancy new moniker. The area was a damned sight rougher then than it is now. I lost count of how many of my colleagues got mugged in the subways that led to Old St. Tube which lay under the roundabout. I got chinned on the platform once but my assailant fucked off pretty sharpish after I bent a mini-umbrella over his head.
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When my wife worked at the old Klout offices in SoMA (south of market in SF) the bit behind their building was known as 'Pistolwhip Alley' for the number of muggings inflicted on people taking smoke breaks there.
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