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    Help me do my job. Latest in a series

    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.

    #2
    I'd think so. It's, like, 3 miles from Facebook HQ in Menlo Park and nobody would say Facebook's not in Silicon Valley.

    Also, a quick look at Wiki lists Redwood City as a Silicon Valley city.

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      #3
      I'm sure that the company would like to think of itself as being a Silicon Valley firm

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        #4
        I'd think Silicon Valley should try harder to promote companies like this one. They'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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          #5
          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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            #6
            Is Sikicon Valley an actual municipality or just a broadly defined grograohicall area?

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              #7
              Originally posted by Belhaven View Post
              Is Sikicon Valley an actual municipality or just a broadly defined grograohicall area?

              That's the best typo I've seen in years. I tip my hat to you, sir.

              The other's not bad either.

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                #8
                Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                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.
                Yeah, we write about those companies too. It's all about AI and Big Data these days. (And ball bearings.) So much so that doctors worry that robots will be able to do their jobs in the future or at least large parts of their job.

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                  #9
                  Originally posted by Belhaven View Post
                  Is Sikicon Valley an actual municipality or just a broadly defined grograohicall area?
                  It is a state of mind.

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                    #10
                    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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                      #11
                      According to the infallible fount Wikipedia, Redwood City is in Silicon Valley.

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                        #12
                        Ok, then it is true.

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                          #13
                          Originally posted by caja-dglh View Post

                          It is a state of mind.
                          Yeah, I would only use "Silicon Valley" to refer to a company in that general geographic area, but also the company would need to be something related to computing/internet/or high-tech stuff. I wouldn't say something like "a Silicon Valley auto garage."

                          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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                            #14
                            Silicon Alley (NY), Silicon Fen (Cambridge, UK), Silicon Roundabout (Shoreditch, London)

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                              #15
                              WIkipedia again:
                              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_technology_centers#Places_with_"Silicon"_n ames

                              I like Philicon Valley

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                                #16
                                At one point, I thought maybe the Bay Area was simply a good place to mine sand to create silicon.

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                                  #17
                                  Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
                                  They'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.
                                  Excellent. I've just plunked my life savings into a Silicon Valley health tech that has a machine that fully diagnoses you based on just one drop of blood. Charming woman runs the place...

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                                    #18
                                    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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                                      #19
                                      We've got a Silicon Roundabout in Hackney.

                                      https://www.wired.co.uk/article/sili...-city-property

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                                        #20
                                        Originally posted by MsD View Post
                                        We've got a Silicon Roundabout in Hackney.

                                        https://www.wired.co.uk/article/sili...-city-property

                                        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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                                          #21
                                          Originally posted by Nocturnal Submission View Post
                                          I got chinned on the platform once but my assailant fucked off pretty sharpish after I bent a mini-umbrella over his head.
                                          Now I'm imagining a Kid Creole cover version of Down In The Tube Station At Midnight.


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                                            #22
                                            Originally posted by Benjm View Post

                                            Now I'm imagining a Kid Creole cover version of Down In The Tube Station At Midnight.


                                            Hahaha - a mini-umbrella not a cocktail one, you naughty man.

                                            They're very handy weapons:





                                            It wasn't so straight after I'd thumped him with it.

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                                              #23
                                              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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