Silicon Valley, a Dangerous Place for Pessimists

Read in an article about the Silicon Valley’s next boom: The “Valley” was the coolest place on the planet in the Roaring Nineties!! As G. Pascal Zachary points out, San Jose has now one of the highest unemployment rates of any large U.S. city and that the region has lost about 200,000 tech jobs in the past three years. The dot-com bust had its good side: It silenced the arrogant and garrulous geeks and the visionless opportunists are far gone. The Silicon Valley does carry a curse; it is a victim of its own success. The rest of the world learned a lot from Silicon Valley’s triumphs, which is chiefly why the good times will never be as good as they once were. However, Silicon Valley remains an unparalleled concentration of technological, entrepreneurial and managerial know-how and The Bay Area, with the valley as its spine, still receives one-third of all venture funds invested in the United States. But the gap is narrowing between the rest of the world and Silicon Valley. Even as Silicon Valley remains a magnet for talent, more brains are likely to flow out of the region. It has a pretty good foundation for riding the next wave, yet it will difficult for it to be as far ahead of the rest of the world as it has been in the past.

I espacially like Zachary’s conclusion:

Silicon Valley might never again realize the standards of its past greatness, but this should not be mistaken for failure, or even the death of the valley. The only certainty about Silicon Valley’s future is that past warnings of mortality are only prologue to rebirth.