11 ms·

Secret History of Silicon Valley (2009)

140 points by mathattack 8y ago

tw1010 8y ago
Most likely this was posted because it was mentioned on one of the latest A16Z podcast episodes, if anyone is curious. Edit: I believe this is the episode: https://a16z.com/2018/07/06/ben-marc-stevenjohnson-summit-2017/ https://a16z.com/2018/07/06/ben-marc-stevenjohnson-summit-20...
dredmorbius 8y ago
A perennial HN favourite, but well worth reading if you've not already, or re-reading if you haven't lately. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Secret%20History%20of%20Silicon%20Valley&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Secret%20History%20of%20Silico...
- j88439h84 8y ago
  404
  - quickthrower2 8y ago
    Not for me
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    Seems to be failing intermittantly. Try reloading.
sillysaurus3 8y ago
This slide stood out: https://i.imgur.com/t7DAgJo.jpg https://i.imgur.com/t7DAgJo.jpg Failure was accepted as a part of the culture. Today it seems the opposite. Any hint of failure and people seem to distance themselves from your future ambitions. More and more, we seem to be moving toward a world ruled by massive corporations, where small developers have almost no autonomy or freedom, and we're subservient to the concept of intellectual property and non-disclosure. The age of tinkerers building something huge seems to have been a short-lived historical accident. That's related, because the only way to build something huge is to repeatedly fail at it. And that doesn't seem acceptable today.
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  Culture has changed dramatically and I hate to blame things on politics but i feel like that's exactly what it is. It's divided us all, made the identification of truth seem like a nonsensical fairytale, and those sentiments have sank into the background of cognition. We can dissociate all we like from culture and relegate ourselves to our comfort zones of computing, technology, things that bring us stability and a way of making sense of the world - but if we can't own up to our own mistakes then all of that goes away. You can say you aren't affected by it, but it's divided people through argument, it's made progress in education and research seem pointless because no one knows what's real anymore, who to listen to, what to believe. Failure is something to be scared of in a culture that's been indoctrinated into seeing chaos everywhere to the point that the only thing that matters is survival. Survival instinct is something people can hack. The point is to not allow it to blind you from coming to solutions as a group with people you are supposed to trust - whether through contractual obligation or through your own self defined choice. Don't let this culture break our culture. Don't let the culture of shifting of blame become part of you. Failure is critically important to success. Anyone who ignores this fact is blind to the process of learning. You have to be able to identify your own errors. Being right all the time is it's own version of insanity, because one literally can not identify the difference between correctness and error. We need to be able to fail and we need to be able to fail in front of others. Otherwise everything will keep going in circles with no sense of progress. I've lived my whole life this way, change, change, change. Blame, blame, blame. Accept, accept, accept. Correct, correct, correct. This is not a good mindset to have when you have to build things with other people unless you can point out your own errors to others, allow others to point out errors to you. You have to know what failure is in order to identify success. In education, this is obvious. A or F. In groups of building things, people define these metrics. Everyone either must agree 'this is the metric' or everyone must agree 'this is the new standard'. That's how to measure yourself in systems where rules are continuously changing and you can't identify why.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    > no one knows what's real anymore, who to listen to, what to believe. It's a myth that "trusted news sources" were more truthful before the internet. It's just that the internet has exposed all the propaganda going on. Professional historians well know that historical accounts tend to be more propaganda than factual, which is why they always look for independent corroboration. Archaeology has rewritten many accounts of things like battlefields, even modern ones.
giancarlostoro 8y ago
Somebody shared this in a HN comment sometime back and I absolutely loved this video. As a government contractor I had no idea of this rich history. His website is also full of amazing gems too.
slededit 8y ago
The computer history museum has done an amazing job of documenting the history of computing. I'd argue they slant heavily to hardware but for the early history that was the coolest part. I wish they'd get BillG to speak.
kulu2002 8y ago
What Steve Blank has told is essentially a golden past... This[1] is the present...Life in SV! [1] https://thebolditalic.com/this-is-your-life-in-silicon-valley-933091235095 https://thebolditalic.com/this-is-your-life-in-silicon-valle...
B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago
Book of Genesis: https://web.stanford.edu/class/e145/2007_fall/materials/noyce.html https://web.stanford.edu/class/e145/2007_fall/materials/noyc...
erikb 8y ago
Also interesting would be the secret history of silicon valley AFTER 2009. I think it's the biggest boom area all over the world since the 2008 crisis. Would be really interesting to see how NY banking started interacting with west coast engineering or VC circles there.
refurb 8y ago
Interesting how Silicon Valley owes its existence to defense work, but any hint of it now creates a serious backlash!
- ionised 8y ago
  That's true of a lot of things in history, and doesn't seem very interesting to me. Some things were instrumental in the past that are no longer necessary.

140 points by mathattack 8y ago

Most likely this was posted because it was mentioned on one of the latest A16Z podcast episodes, if anyone is curious. Edit: I believe this is the episode: https://a16z.com/2018/07/06/ben-marc-stevenjohnson-summit-2017/ https://a16z.com/2018/07/06/ben-marc-stevenjohnson-summit-20...

dredmorbius 8y ago

A perennial HN favourite, but well worth reading if you've not already, or re-reading if you haven't lately. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Secret%20History%20of%20Silicon%20Valley&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Secret%20History%20of%20Silico...

j88439h84 8y ago
404
- quickthrower2 8y ago
  Not for me
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Seems to be failing intermittantly. Try reloading.

sillysaurus3 8y ago

This slide stood out: https://i.imgur.com/t7DAgJo.jpg https://i.imgur.com/t7DAgJo.jpg Failure was accepted as a part of the culture. Today it seems the opposite. Any hint of failure and people seem to distance themselves from your future ambitions. More and more, we seem to be moving toward a world ruled by massive corporations, where small developers have almost no autonomy or freedom, and we're subservient to the concept of intellectual property and non-disclosure. The age of tinkerers building something huge seems to have been a short-lived historical accident. That's related, because the only way to build something huge is to repeatedly fail at it. And that doesn't seem acceptable today.

s-shellfish 8y ago
Culture has changed dramatically and I hate to blame things on politics but i feel like that's exactly what it is. It's divided us all, made the identification of truth seem like a nonsensical fairytale, and those sentiments have sank into the background of cognition. We can dissociate all we like from culture and relegate ourselves to our comfort zones of computing, technology, things that bring us stability and a way of making sense of the world - but if we can't own up to our own mistakes then all of that goes away. You can say you aren't affected by it, but it's divided people through argument, it's made progress in education and research seem pointless because no one knows what's real anymore, who to listen to, what to believe. Failure is something to be scared of in a culture that's been indoctrinated into seeing chaos everywhere to the point that the only thing that matters is survival. Survival instinct is something people can hack. The point is to not allow it to blind you from coming to solutions as a group with people you are supposed to trust - whether through contractual obligation or through your own self defined choice. Don't let this culture break our culture. Don't let the culture of shifting of blame become part of you. Failure is critically important to success. Anyone who ignores this fact is blind to the process of learning. You have to be able to identify your own errors. Being right all the time is it's own version of insanity, because one literally can not identify the difference between correctness and error. We need to be able to fail and we need to be able to fail in front of others. Otherwise everything will keep going in circles with no sense of progress. I've lived my whole life this way, change, change, change. Blame, blame, blame. Accept, accept, accept. Correct, correct, correct. This is not a good mindset to have when you have to build things with other people unless you can point out your own errors to others, allow others to point out errors to you. You have to know what failure is in order to identify success. In education, this is obvious. A or F. In groups of building things, people define these metrics. Everyone either must agree 'this is the metric' or everyone must agree 'this is the new standard'. That's how to measure yourself in systems where rules are continuously changing and you can't identify why.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  > no one knows what's real anymore, who to listen to, what to believe. It's a myth that "trusted news sources" were more truthful before the internet. It's just that the internet has exposed all the propaganda going on. Professional historians well know that historical accounts tend to be more propaganda than factual, which is why they always look for independent corroboration. Archaeology has rewritten many accounts of things like battlefields, even modern ones.

giancarlostoro 8y ago

Somebody shared this in a HN comment sometime back and I absolutely loved this video. As a government contractor I had no idea of this rich history. His website is also full of amazing gems too.

slededit 8y ago

The computer history museum has done an amazing job of documenting the history of computing. I'd argue they slant heavily to hardware but for the early history that was the coolest part. I wish they'd get BillG to speak.

kulu2002 8y ago

What Steve Blank has told is essentially a golden past... This[1] is the present...Life in SV! [1] https://thebolditalic.com/this-is-your-life-in-silicon-valley-933091235095 https://thebolditalic.com/this-is-your-life-in-silicon-valle...

B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago

Book of Genesis: https://web.stanford.edu/class/e145/2007_fall/materials/noyce.html https://web.stanford.edu/class/e145/2007_fall/materials/noyc...

erikb 8y ago

Also interesting would be the secret history of silicon valley AFTER 2009. I think it's the biggest boom area all over the world since the 2008 crisis. Would be really interesting to see how NY banking started interacting with west coast engineering or VC circles there.

refurb 8y ago

Interesting how Silicon Valley owes its existence to defense work, but any hint of it now creates a serious backlash!

ionised 8y ago
That's true of a lot of things in history, and doesn't seem very interesting to me. Some things were instrumental in the past that are no longer necessary.