The New Yorker, May 27, 2013
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The New Yorker, May 27, 2013 http://archives.newyorker.com/global/print.asp?path=/djvu/Con... A 1\EPOI\TER. AT LAI\GE CHANGE THE WORLD Silicon Valley transfers its slogans-and its money--to the realm ofpolitics . BY GEORGE PACKER. n 1978, the year that I graduated from year's Facebook public stock offering which promised to transport couples back I high school, in Palo Alto, the name alone creared halfa dozen more ofthe for to a time when local residents lived in Silicon Valley was not in use beyond a mer and more than a thousand ofthe lat two-thousand-square-foot houses---wid small group of tech cognoscenti. Apple ter. There are also record numbers ofpoor for forty-three thousand dollars. Computer had incorporated the previous people, and the past two years have seen The technology industry's newest year, releasing the first popular personal a twenty-per-cent rise in homelessness, wealth is swallowing up the San Francisco computer, the Apple II. The major tech largely because of the soaring cost of Peninsula. If Silicon Valley remains the nology companies made electronics hard housing. After decades in which the center of engineering breakthroughs, San ware, and on the way to school I rode my country has become less and less equal, Francisco has become a magnet for hun bike through the Stanford Industrial Silicon Valley is one of the most unequal dreds ofsoftware start-ups, many ofthem Park, past the offices ofHewlett- Packard, places in America. in the South ofMarket area, where Twit Varian, and Xerox PARC. The neighbor Private-school attendance has surged, ter has its headquarters. (Half the start hoods of the Santa Clara Valley were while public schools in poor communi ups seem to have been fow1ded by Face dotted with cheap, modern, one-story ties- such as East Palo Alto, which is book alumni.) A lot ofyounger employees houses--.:alled Eichlers, after the builder mosdy cut off from the city by Highway ofSilicon Valley companies live in the city Joseph Eichler-with glass walls, open 101 - have f.illen into disrepair and lack and commute to work in white, Wi-Fi floor plans, and flat-roofed carports. basic supplies. In wealthy districts, the equipped company buses, which collect (Steve Jobs grew up in an imitation public schools have essentially been priva passengers at fifteen or so stops around Eichler, called a Likeler.) The average tized; they insulate themselves from San Francisco. The buses-whose sched house in Palo Alto cost about a hundred shortfalls in state funding with money ules are withheld from the public-have and twenty-five thousand dollars. Along raised by foundations they have set up for become a vivid emblem ofthe tech boom's the main downtown street, University themselves. In 1983, parents at Woodside stratifYing effect in d1e Bay Area. Rebecca Avenue-the future address of PayPal, Elementary School, which is surrounded Soh1it, who has lived in San Fran cisco for Facebook, and Google-were sports by some of the Valley's wealthiest tech thirty years, recendy wrote in The London shops, discount variety stores, and several families, started a foundation in order to Review of Books, "Sometimes d1e Google art-house cinemas, together with the offiet budget cuts resulting from the en Bus just seems like one face of Janus shuttered, X- rated Paris Theatre. Across actment ofProposition 13, in 1978, which headed capitalism; it contains the people El Camino Real, the Stanford Shopping drastically limited California property too valuable even to use public transport or Center was anchored by Macy's and taxes. TheWoodside School Foundation drive themselves. Right by the Google bus Woolworth's, with one boutique store now brings in about two million dollars a stop on Cesar Chavez Street immigrant a Victoria's Secret had opened inl977- year for a school with fewer than five hun men from Latin America stand waiting and a parking lot full of Datsuns and dred children, and every spring it hosts a for employers in the building trade to Chevy Novas. High-end dining was vir gala with a live auction. I attended it two scoop them up, or to be arrested and de tually unknown in Palo Alto, as was the years ago, when the theme was RockS tar, ported by the govemment." Some of the adjective "high-end." The public schools and one ofGoogle's first employees sat at city's hottest restaurants are popping up in in the area were excellent and almost uni my table after performing in a pickup the neighborhoods with shuttle stops. versally attended; the few kids I knew who band called Parental Indiscretion. School Rents d1ere are rising even futer than else went to private school had somehow benefactors, dressed up as Tina Turner or where in San Fran cisco, and in some cases messed up. The Valley was thoroughly Jimmy Page, and consumingJump'n Jack they have doubled in the past year. middle class, egalitarian, pleasant, and a Flash hanger steaks, bid thirteen thou The buses carry their wired cargo litde boring. sand dollars for Pimp My Hog! ("Ride south to the "campuses" ofGoogle, Face Thirty-five years later, the average through town in your vety own custom book, Apple, and other companies, which house in Palo Alto sells for more than two ized 1996 Harley Davidson XLH1200C are designed to be fully functioning com million dollars. The Stanford Shopping Sportster") and twenty thousand for a tour munities, not just places for working. Center's parking lot is a sea of Lexuses of the Japanese gardens on the estate of Google's grounds, in Mountain View----a and Audis, and their owners are shopping Larty Elliwn, the founder of Oracle and working-class town when I was growing at Burberry and Louis Vuitton. There are the cow1try's highest-paid chiefexecutive . up----are modelled on the casual, Frisbee fifty or so billionaires and tens of thou The climax arrived when a Mad Men throwing feel of Stanford University, the sands ofmillionaires in Silicon Valley; bst Supper Club dinner for sixteen guests- incubator of Silicon Valley, where the 44 THE NEW YO~KEII. MAY 27, 2013 1 of 12 5/22/13 10:34 AM The New Yorker, May 27, 2013 http://archives.newyorker.com/global/print.asp?path=/djvu/Con... In Silicon Valley, government is considered slow, staffid by mediocrities, and ridden with obsolete rules and inifficiencies. ILLUSTRATION BY ISTVAN BANYAI THE NEW YO~KER, MAY 27, 200 45 2 of 12 5/22/13 10:34 AM The New Yorker, May 27, 2013 http://archives.newyorker.com/global/print.asp?path=/djvu/Con... company's founders met, in grad school. making the country energy-independent, recounted how young Lebanese Muslims A polychrome Google bike can be picked no one takes them too seriously-it's a who might have been tempted by extrem up anywhere on campus, and left any given that their motivation is profit. But ism broadened their views after going on where, so that another employee can use when technology entrepreneurs describe Facebook and mending people "who have it. Electric cars, kept at a charging station, their lofty goals there's no smirk or wink. gone to Europe." He suggested that the allow employees to run errands. Face "Many see their social responsibiLity social network could help solve the prob book's buildings, in Menlo Park, between fulfilled by their businesses, not by social lem of terrorism, "It's not out of a deep 101 and the salt marshes along the Bay, or political action," one young entrepre hatred ofanyone," Zuckerberg offered. "It surround a simulated town square whose neur said of his colleagues. "Jt's remark comes from a lack of connectedness, a concrete surface is decorated with the ably convenient that they can achieve all lack of communication, a lack of empa word "HACK," in letters so large that they their goals just by doing their start-up." thy, and a lack ofunderstanding." Succes can be seen from the air. At Facebook, He added, 'They actually think that Face sive U.S. Administrations had failed to employees can eat sushi or burritos, lift book is going to be the panacea for many resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; weights, get a haircut, have their clothes of the world's problems. lt isn't cyni perhaps the answer was to get as many dry-cleaned, and see a dentist, all without cism-it's arrogance and ignorance." people as possible on Facebook. leaving work. Apple, meanwhile, plans to A few years ago, when Barack Obama The conflicting pressures of Silicon spend nearly five billion dollars to build a visited one Silicon Valley campus, an em Valley-its work ethic, status conscious giant, impenetrable ringed headquarters ployee of the company told a colleague ness, idealism, and greed- were summed in the middle ofa park that is technically that he wasn't going to take time from up in an ad for the University ofSan Fran part ofCupertino . These inward-looking his work to go hear the President's re cisco that I spotted on a public bus shelter places keep tech workers from having marks, explaining, "l'm making more ofa south of Market Street: "Become wildly even accidental contact with the sur difference than anybody in government successful without becoming a ;erk no one rounding community. The design critic could possibly make." Jn 2006, Google likes. Change the world from here." Alexandra Lange, in her recent e-book, started its philanthropic arm, Google.org, The technology industry, by seques 'The Dot-Com City: Silicon Valley Ur but other tech giants did not follow its tering itselffrom the community it inhab banism," writes, 'The more Silicon Valley lead.