Driving South
I have a confession to make—I missed the last day of WWDC sessions today just so I could take a jaunt down the 101 toward that fabled epicenter of the digital world, Silicon Valley. That’s right—rather than get the dope on “Advanced WebKit APIs” and NSTextView’s strange new abilities, I pointed my big (rented) American car south, cranked the Gemma Hayes CD I just bought (I’m madly in love with her, incidentally—Gemma, will you marry me?) and roared past exit after familiar sounding exit. Menlo Park—that’s where all the VC’s are (bastards!)! Redwood City—that’s where @Home…ahem…was! Mountain View—that’s where Sun is! Palo Alto—that’s where Stanford is! Cupertino—well, you all know that one :-).
It was a fairly pleasant trip (the 101’s severe traffic problems notwithstanding), but I have to admit I came away from it rather unimpressed. Anyone expecting to find a technological fantasyland in the Santa Clara Valley will be sorely disappointed. Aside from the Apple Campus (which is incredible—it’s like Disneyland for Mac geeks!) and the Tech Museum (which, unfortunately, was closed by the time I made it down to San Jose), there’s little to see aside from loads of non-descript office parks, hotels catering to business travelers, and suburban strip malls!
The lesson? Despite its storied history, there is really nothing that magical about Silicon Valley. A lot of people here are wondering if the area will ever regain its status as one of the centers of American power, but I think that question is irrelevant—thanks to the Internet, innovators need no longer flock to a single place—they can just as easily live in Glasgow, Florida, Seattle, or Portland as in Palo Alto. The time and place immortalized in Pirates of Silicon Valley may be gone, but there’s still plenty of innovation out there—I think it’s just going to be a lot more evenly distributed from now on!