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> Greed, of course, is always a human motivation, but the early Valley culture was created by entrepreneurial outsiders who genuinely wanted to make the world b
by sneak 3y ago
> Greed, of course, is always a human motivation, but the early Valley culture was created by entrepreneurial outsiders who genuinely wanted to make the world better.
This is a rewriting of history. SV started (in the 1950s!) as an outgrowth of the military industrial complex, making tech hardware for DoD radars and missiles. The entrepreneurial, consumer-facing, "change the world" stuff happened afterward.
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoIndeed. The rush to replace WWII-era vacuum tubes with solid state silicon was driven by the need to get US bombers and then missiles on target, and stop the Russians doing the same. For example, Fairchild Semiconductor (Santa Clara) was originally part of a (non-SV: Delaware) optics company that made spy satellite cameras. The semiconductor division's first product in 1957 was a transistor used in the B70 bomber computer and the Minuteman ICBM and it cost over $1600 a unit in today's money.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoI know you are correct, but if Silicon Valley can have more than one "era", I think many people now regard the one that began with the Homebrew Computer Club as being the more significant one at least for modern times.