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"The Secret History of Silicon Valley": https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo TL;DW: Unlimited debt-based government spending during WWII i

"The Secret History of Silicon Valley": https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo TL;DW: Unlimited debt-based government spending during WWII in R&D and electronics development like radar (which actually is a catch-all phrase for lots of very different technologies) provided the fertile ground for the later capitalistic growth phase. > Today, Silicon Valley is known around the world as a fount of technology innovation and development fueled by private venture capital and peopled by fabled entrepreneurs. But it wasn't always so. Unbeknownst to even seasoned inhabitants, today's Silicon Valley had its start in government secrecy and wartime urgency.

redis_mlc 7y ago
It's not commonly known about the 40s period when Stanford U. was known as "The Farm." But afterwards ... the military was the only customer for $10 transistors in the 50s, there's like 100 Superfund sites with plume vents, and the Blue Cube was only recently torn down.
gumby 7y ago
> TL;DW: Unlimited debt-based government spending during WWII in R&D and electronics development like radar (which actually is a catch-all phrase for lots of very different technologies) provided the fertile ground for the later capitalistic growth phase. I agree with this with the caveat that the big beneficiary of this largesse in the wartime and postwar region was inside Route 128 in Boston; Silicon Valley really started taking off in the mid-late 70s. This is actually reflected in the timeline (though its parentheicization is buggy). The then primacy of the greater Boston area is not a complete accident: Both FDR's science advisor, Vannevar Bush, and the head of the wartime NDRC were born and educated in Boston (both MIT grads; Conent was president of Harvard). As the article points out, the major SV academic institutions Stanford and UCB were still considered second tier at that time (despite UCB's atomic work and Stanford's having already produced a US president).
- nosianu 7y ago
  It is all mentioned and explained in the video I linked though. Those Boston developments were not in isolation, what happened there impacted what happened in SV.

redis_mlc 7y ago

It's not commonly known about the 40s period when Stanford U. was known as "The Farm." But afterwards ... the military was the only customer for $10 transistors in the 50s, there's like 100 Superfund sites with plume vents, and the Blue Cube was only recently torn down.

gumby 7y ago

> TL;DW: Unlimited debt-based government spending during WWII in R&D and electronics development like radar (which actually is a catch-all phrase for lots of very different technologies) provided the fertile ground for the later capitalistic growth phase. I agree with this with the caveat that the big beneficiary of this largesse in the wartime and postwar region was inside Route 128 in Boston; Silicon Valley really started taking off in the mid-late 70s. This is actually reflected in the timeline (though its parentheicization is buggy). The then primacy of the greater Boston area is not a complete accident: Both FDR's science advisor, Vannevar Bush, and the head of the wartime NDRC were born and educated in Boston (both MIT grads; Conent was president of Harvard). As the article points out, the major SV academic institutions Stanford and UCB were still considered second tier at that time (despite UCB's atomic work and Stanford's having already produced a US president).

nosianu 7y ago
It is all mentioned and explained in the video I linked though. Those Boston developments were not in isolation, what happened there impacted what happened in SV.