The reputation of Silicon Valley precedes itself in the manner of Manchester’s mills during the birth of the industrial revolution or New York skyscrapers in the boom years after the end of World War I. The power and economic might of these epicentres of commerce should be manifest in an immense physical presence towards which would-be Horatio Algers are drawn with their bright shiny dreams.
Perhaps a virtual world deserves only virtual wealth. Despite repeated assurances that visitors will rub shoulders with millionaires in the shopping districts of Silicon Valley, and that this stretch of uninspiring real estate is the engine room of the Californian economy (one of the world’s largest), you still get the feeling that you are the victim of the world’s biggest practical joke. Where is the ostentation of Monaco and the condescension dripping from the walls of family estates in England?
Exit the six-lane highway at any of the towns along Highway 101—Palo Alto lies to the north of Stanford University, or the strangely Orwellian district of Sunnyvale that is home to Google, Yahoo and the NASA research park—and there is little to break the monotony of blue skies, perma-smog and low slung glass buildings glinting in the Californian sunlight. It all looks as impermanent as a spaghetti-western film set. Given that this phenomenon has arisen in only the last two decades and has already had its booms and busts, it can be excused for creating the impression that it could all be packed up and trucked out the day after tomorrow.
The ready-to-go dynamism that makes this place the world capital of work and commerce is underpinned by a nonchalance born of the knowledge that the denizens of digitalia have us just where they want us. We surf the websites they have built, and buy their software and the bits of stuff that go with them as acts of faith, pretending to know what it’s all for. Our struggle to make sense of all the gigabytes of content our media stream at us is the revenge of the nerds we used to humiliate at school by selo-taping them to prominent landmarks. We’re in their world now, flapping helplessly like upturned turtles.
The geniuses who have made all this possible are suitably smug coming to work at 10am in their Birkenstocks and checkered shirts and spending an allotted day a week on research projects of their own choosing.