✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Silicon Valley’s Gold Rush Roots—Asterisk

asteriskmag.com · 4,464 words · saved by 1 readers

Silicon Valley, purveyor of disruptive technologies, likes to think of itself as sui generis. But there’s a clear line from tech’s knowledge economy to the Bay Area’s first economy: gold mining. One of California’s most eloquent observers, Joan Didion, wrote about a great divide between the “Old” California families, the early settlers of the 19th century who endured the hardships of the frontier, and the “New” Californians, the migrants who arrived during and after World War II to populate aerospace and other blue-sky industries and who knew only good times. But Didion also noted that Old and New in fact were not so different: Both came to California to make a buck. That buck often came through technology. The sense of innovation embodied in modern technological marvels such as personal computers, supersonic aircraft, and genetic engineering can seem to sever Californians from their past. But while the enterprises of the 19th century may seem low-tech to 21st-century eyes, they were t

Silicon Valley’s Gold Rush Roots—Asterisk Silicon Valley, purveyor of disruptive technologies, likes to think of itself as sui generis. But there’s a clear line from tech’s knowledge economy to the Bay Area’s first economy: gold mining. One of California’s most eloquent observers, Joan Didion, wrote about a great divide between the “Old” California families, the early settlers of the 19th century who endured the hardships of the frontier, and the “New” Californians, the migrants who arrived during and after World War II to populate aerospace and other blue-sky industries and who knew only good

Explore this link on the map →

saved by

related reading