
Secret History of Silicon Valley (2009) - mathattack
https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
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sillysaurus3
This slide stood out:
[https://i.imgur.com/t7DAgJo.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/t7DAgJo.jpg)

Failure was accepted as a part of the culture. Today it seems the opposite.
Any hint of failure and people seem to distance themselves from your future
ambitions.

More and more, we seem to be moving toward a world ruled by massive
corporations, where small developers have almost no autonomy or freedom, and
we're subservient to the concept of intellectual property and non-disclosure.
The age of tinkerers building something huge seems to have been a short-lived
historical accident.

That's related, because the only way to build something huge is to repeatedly
fail at it. And that doesn't seem acceptable today.

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maxxxxx
When I started in computing in the 80s a lot of people did programming out of
intellectual curiosity and fun. People did things like easter eggs and other
stupid stuff. Now it's just a career and everything is about money, money and
more money. I guess that's a natural progression once something goes
mainstream.

~~~
greggman
From my POV (maybe I'm just looking in a different direction?) I see way more
people programming out of intellectual curiosity and fun than ever before. As
just one example the 2018 Global Game Jam had 8,608 game created in a weekend.
The Unity community is HUGE. The Processing community, the Open Frameworks
community, the Three.js community. Not seeing a lack of people doing
programming for curiosity and fun.

~~~
wilsonnb2
There are more people programming for intellectual reasons now than ever
before in absolute numbers.

However, that larger absolute number is a much smaller proportion of the total
number of programmers than it was in the past.

I think it's also safe to say that the mainstream of programming has moved
more towards monetary motivation and away from intellectual curiosity.

~~~
bluedino
And look at the quality:quantity ratio...

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slededit
The computer history museum has done an amazing job of documenting the history
of computing. I'd argue they slant heavily to hardware but for the early
history that was the coolest part. I wish they'd get BillG to speak.

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kulu2002
What Steve Blank has told is essentially a golden past... This[1] is the
present...Life in SV!

[1] [https://thebolditalic.com/this-is-your-life-in-silicon-
valle...](https://thebolditalic.com/this-is-your-life-in-silicon-
valley-933091235095)

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dredmorbius
A perennial HN favourite, but well worth reading if you've not already, or re-
reading if you haven't lately.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Secret%20History%20of%20Silico...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Secret%20History%20of%20Silicon%20Valley&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

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j88439h84
404

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dredmorbius
Seems to be failing intermittantly. Try reloading.

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tw1010
Most likely this was posted because it was mentioned on one of the latest A16Z
podcast episodes, if anyone is curious.

Edit: I believe this is the episode: [https://a16z.com/2018/07/06/ben-marc-
stevenjohnson-summit-20...](https://a16z.com/2018/07/06/ben-marc-
stevenjohnson-summit-2017/)

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erikb
Also interesting would be the secret history of silicon valley AFTER 2009. I
think it's the biggest boom area all over the world since the 2008 crisis.
Would be really interesting to see how NY banking started interacting with
west coast engineering or VC circles there.

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B1FF_PSUVM
Book of Genesis:
[https://web.stanford.edu/class/e145/2007_fall/materials/noyc...](https://web.stanford.edu/class/e145/2007_fall/materials/noyce.html)

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giancarlostoro
Somebody shared this in a HN comment sometime back and I absolutely loved this
video. As a government contractor I had no idea of this rich history. His
website is also full of amazing gems too.

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refurb
Interesting how Silicon Valley owes its existence to defense work, but any
hint of it now creates a serious backlash!

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ionised
That's true of a lot of things in history, and doesn't seem very interesting
to me.

Some things were instrumental in the past that are no longer necessary.

