"A Guide to What the Hell Is Up With Silicon Valley Right Now" (the future is Pittsburgh)

You realize this is all a distraction right? Nothing will change, the Valley will last as long as silicon.

...The radio and the telephone
And the movies that we know
May just be passing fancies,
And in time may go !

But, oh my dear,
Our love is here to stay.
Together we're
Going a long, long way

In time the Rockies may crumble,
Gibralter may tumble,
There're only made of clay,
But our love is here to stay.

-George Gershwin

From Wired:

A Google shuttle bus in San Francisco. Photo: Ariel Zambelich / WIRED

Conversations about Silicon Valley, like conversations about the media industry, are awfully navel-gazing. It doesn’t help that no one really knows who the “sides” are here — Is it non-tech workers against entrepreneurs/startups/VCs? Shuttle buses against city governments? City governments against unions? The there’s-an-app-for-that mindset against structural change? Tech workers who made it big in recent IPOs against other tech workers (who still make a lot of money but can’t afford local rents)?

We’ve got a roundup of the WIRED opinion pieces you must read here, whether it’s just to catch up on what the hell is going on in Silicon Valley or to explore the nuances — and there are many. Regardless of your position, though, it’s clear that as tech pervades every aspect of our lives, and Silicon Valley represents the tech industry, this is an important cultural moment to pay attention to … and care about.

1. Silicon Valley can’t afford to ignore its haters. Even just the image of arrogance could kill the industry — and future innovation. Silicon Valley is always selling the next category, the new frontier, the thing you’ll need tomorrow but can’t even imagine wanting today. A computer in your home. The Internet in your pocket. Your music in the cloud. A smartphone on your wrist or face. Unlike any other industry, tech relies on not merely trust but faith that a leap into the unknown, into breaking routines, will be rewarded. Since business models of tech companies are built on monetizing data that users freely supply, losing the trust and optimism of customers wouldn’t just mean failing to sell the next big thing … it could mean failing to make it. Read WIRED editor Bill Wasik’s argument here.
 

2. The protestors in this culture war — on both “sides” — are fighting about the wrong things. Last year, a fake Google bus protest felt real and a real rant by a tech entrepreneur felt fake because all logic has been lost in the midst of the cultural upheaval between those in tech and those outside of it. But the battlelines aren’t so clear: Not all who enter the tech industry do so with the intention to cash in, and not all who fight tech are Luddites who inherently see coders as the enemy. Still, make no mistake, argues Oakland illustrator and writer Susie Cagle in WIRED Opinion: We are in the midst of a fight here – and there must be sides. It’s just in everyone’s best interest that those sides don’t shift attention away from much-needed structural change by shifting blame to the bottom of the tech-sector food chain.
 

3. Silicon Valley stands for meritocracy, but that’s a dangerous myth when it comes to social change. If the tech scene is really a meritocracy, professor Alice Marwick argues in this exclusive excerpt from Status Update, why are so many of its key players, from Mark Zuckerberg to Steve Jobs, white men? The myths of authenticity, meritocracy, and entrepreneurialism do have some basis in fact. But they also reinforce ideals that shore up the tech industry’s power structures and privileges. And social software may inadvertently do more to promote this inequality than to counter it. It’s a kind of digital elitism that positions technology and entrepreneurship as a catch-all solution to an array of difficult problems — but not everyone can work at a startup, and startup models can’t be applied to all situations....MORE

From Pacific Standard:

It’s Settled: Silicon Valley Is Dying. So What’s Next?

The Rust Belt will rise again.

Silicon Valley is the next Detroit. California crumbles and Texas rises. Or so journalist Erica Grieder would have you believe. I assert the forgotten, shrinking Rust Belt stands as the heir apparent to the Innovation Economy. As the Manufacturing Economy (Detroit) fell, the Innovation Economy (Silicon Valley) took over. We can no longer deny that the Innovation Economy is in decline:

Silicon Valley’s tech-fueled prosperity — in combination with a failure by local governments, developers and employers to ensure that housing supply can meet demand — leaves the region vulnerable to talent poaching from less-expensive markets. It also manifests day-to-day in productivity-sapping traffic caused by commuters who clog the freeways driving from more affordable fringe cities.

Pick your poison. Bottom line, the wages are too damn high. The Innovation Economy requires cheaper labor. Exodus of the Creative Class:

Artists aren’t just leaving New York for LA – they’re also going to Portland, Minneapolis, Miami, Atlanta, Philadelphia and countless other places. And, as an aside, I don’t know why they aren’t moving to Newark. It’s 15 minutes away from Manhattan and remarkably cheap. I think it’s the unwarranted New Jersey stigma that unfortunately keeps people from crossing the Hudson. People would rather move to the worst part of Brooklyn and still have the magical “NY” in their address. That single consonant on their mail – “Y” as opposed to “J” – seems to keep people from making that 15-minute trek to Newark.

Emphasis added. So says Moby. Newark is an instructive geography. The ambitious head to New York or San Francisco out of tradition. For the same reason, they avoid Newark. It’s off the map and might as well be Des Moines. Regardless, talent can be someplace cheaper and still in the loop.
Korean made car.
Container box ship navy,
Globalization.

Down goes Detroit. Down goes Silicon Valley. What’s up? Pittsburgh.

Hidden in the slag heap is the Legacy Economy. What’s wrong with the Rust Belt is what will be right. Sinking with anchor institutions:

Others think we may be “too captive to the past,” one Philadelphia participant noted, “by limiting our definition of anchor institutions,” especially to the “eds and meds.” In fact, while universities and hospitals represent the legacy of the industrial wealth once enjoyed in rust belt cities, how and where they deliver services has and continues to evolve. Tom Schorgl of Community Partnership for the Arts agreed, noting that anchors can also be “neighborhood-based institutions or groups that provide an anchor in those neighborhoods.”

The Manufacturing Economy failed and moved to Korea. The Manufacturing Economy succeeded and fed the Innovation Economy. The engineers had to come from somewhere. They came from the anchor institutions that manufacturing built. First, physical geography blessed certain places with coal and waterways. Silicon Valleys of the time boomed. The wealth freed the labor and they sprawled. Wherever innovation happened, college graduates would go.

Luckily, Pittsburgh is too captive to the past. Arts and anchors are the current attraction, all thanks to quirks of earth science. Prosperity is once again grounded in geography, the same one that peaked way back in 1910. Environmentally determined Google:

“Google has signed a lease for an additional 66,000 Square Feet at Bakery Square 2.0 to accommodate for natural growth in our Pittsburgh office. Google Pittsburgh’s engineers and product managers work on search, ads and ads-shopping products used by hundreds of millions of people, as well as core engineering infrastructure.”

Sure, Google pops up in a variety places these days. Whoop-dee-doo, Pittsburgh. Hold on. Google is an anchor: “Consider the history of the growth of Google in Pittsburgh, home of one of only three engineering centers in the country.”

Google is the migrant, talent the attraction. Floating with anchor institutions...MORE