How Silicon Valley revolutionized technology

Silicon Valley is not a clearly defined place. It could be just Palo Alto or as far away as the rest of the southern Bay Area, from Berkeley all the way around to San Francisco. The main thing is that the region is the center of the technological renaissance in microchip and internet innovation. Its postwar ascension came from government investment and eventually venture capital as technology revolutionized our world.

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19:15 that is Java, not JavaScript - Sun Micro made Java, Mozilla made JavaScript and used the name to garner some attention away from Sun - they are separate things (thx efkastner)

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Wiki: Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley.[1][2][3] San Jose is Silicon Valley's largest city, the third-largest in California, and the 12th-most populous in the United States.[4] Other major Silicon Valley cities include Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Redwood City, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Cupertino
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Hashtags: #history #SiliconValley #technology #california
chapters
0:00 intro and promo
2:29 origins
5:23 transistors
7:51 hackers
12:38 apple vs pc
16:11 politics
17:24 internet
22:27 smartphones
24:47 now
25:29 outro

[CynicalHistorian]

*[reserved for Errata]*
19:15 that is Java, not JavaScript - Sun Micro made Java, Mozilla made JavaScript and used the name to garner some attention away from Sun - they are separate things (thx @efkastner )

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[In_Our_Timeline]

never forget that california success is because of it immigrant population, it's people have build it from ground up and we all need to appreciate that

[efkastner]

I’m blown away by how much of this frankly insane history you got “correct”! Awesome job. I did notice one (very common!) error - Sun didn’t create JavaScript, they created Java (which has its own very influential history!). Java*script* was created by Brendan Eich at Netscape (later (now former) CEO of Mozilla which was a rebirth of sorts of Netscape). It was only named JavaScript to cash in on the hype around the fairly new at the time Java language from Sun!

[theshenpartei]

Silicon Valley is not only important to California history but also video game history
that is pretty cool

[FearlessSon]

An anecdote on the smartphone stuff there near the end. At the time the iPhone came out, I was working on contract with Microsoft. My office was in a building my department shared with the Windows Mobile development team. At the time, they considered Palm to be their biggest competitor, with posters in their internal office windows that said things like "Friends don't let friends use Palm".

Then Apple comes out with the iPhone and they stood by helpless as the market shifted beneath their feet. They never really caught up after that.

[purpleslog]

Sun developed Java, not JavaScript. JavaScript was developed by NetScape. It was originally called LiveScript. Netscape renamed it to JavaScript when Java started getting attention. At some point Netscape’s non browser biz merged essentially with Sun so maybe the renaming was part of that too. UPDATE: I see the other JavaScript comments now.

[chris]

Moffet Field/NASA Ames Research center was also a major contributing factor to the growth of electronic manufacturers in the region as the former Navy base was a major consumer of electronic parts and early electronics and helped provide a consumer for Fairchild and other companies to grow and develop new products.

[jewfroDZak]

Fantastic work as always. Tricky subject—I'm guessing that a fairly comprehensive understanding of computer sciences was necessary just to parse out the pertinent bits of info that would allow you to craft a followable historical narrative on this topic. Had to have woven an assortment of various subjects of historical inquirty together to paint this picture as clearly as possible. Kudos on doing the researcher's leg work here, friendo...Doubt is the underlying force that drives the search for truth and meaning in our universe and is the most important weapon in the war against human ignorance. Thank you for your service in that conflagration. Stay cynical and lots of love, brotha.

[TheDaniel]

As a Sonoma County resident, I'd love a video about our region. We're often forgotten, being less separationist than those further north and less "important" like our neighbors in the more immediate Bay Area. It's a nice place, molded by the agricultural trends that've changed over time. Currently we're buoyed by wine grapes, but before that it was apples and berries.

[SFNativeboy]

This video brought back lots of memories and tears to my grandpa. Thank you so much for completing this series with such an pivotally important video

[wrightmf]

Interesting the theme you mentioned "libertarianism funded by the federal government." Which we probably see much of that in other communities always bragging how self sufficient they are but in the back side are federal dollars flowing in. Yes, it is well known in those early days a very large percent (80%?) of chip sales was by the government though not directly but by companies like Lockheed. I met a former employee who said when Fairchild started on Ellis St, Lockheed engineers found it convenient short drive to other side of highway 101 to meet Fairchild engineers to discuss a new chip design for systems Lockheed was building.

Though Silicon Valley has reinvented itself, I think the new paradigm is completely different than what it was in 1980s. Back then it was much more hardware oriented, many jobs didn't actually require all the degrees and certifications, there were many entry level jobs, and people could afford to attend community colleges and universities without going into heavy debt. With so much hardware this also meant many places to get surplus and used equipment such as HSC, Halted, WeirdStuff, etc. so hackers and tinkerers can experiment and learn on their own. Before HP became a printer company, they made the best test equipment ever.

These days it seems one needs to be very well educated, be very mobile. There are only two kinds of employment. High paying high six digit incomes, and low paying service jobs. There are no hardware experimentalists, hackers, tinkerers as all the equipment is one-shot disposable. Pursuing a four-year degree can lead to someone forever enslaved in debt. The community is aging, schools are closing as young people growing up in this area realize they cannot afford a reasonable living or raising a family. Of people I know who moved out of California has had their standard of living go up.

The concept of reinventing oneself is what Gary Noy lectured about "California Gold Rush Fires and Floods" on C-SPAN where everyone that came to California all became failures. Since there are no "home eyes" looking at theme, in order to survive and prosper they re-invented themselves into other roles. That culture still prevails to this day. Example is I know a few people that worked at start-ups that later flopped, these people are not perceived as failures but ones that had excellent learning experiences they are able to apply to the next job. i.e. one learns various things in a small company rather than one or two things in a big company.

[dwc]

inb4 watching: I grew up in, and with, Silicon Valley.
My mom was an office/tech worker all my life; some of my earliest memories are of being sat at an IBM keypunch machine at her job in Emeryville with a brick of cards to waste going clackety-clack on the keyboard. And my entire life has been successive iterations of that. One I remember in particular was NASA/Ames, with the UNIVACs in a cooled room behind a glass wall with a 24-hour _analog_ clock on the wall - it freaked me out. In 1974 her tech job at the time moved from the East Bay to the South Bay - just a couple years after the term "Silicon Valley" was coined (will see if your source agrees with the date), and I lived there until my escape from car-centric suburban hell to a more civilized environment in the East Bay; and a few moves later, I landed in San Francisco where I remain, still doing office/tech work.
So, it'll be interesting to see what a kid who's just reading about all of this as history makes of the circumstances of my entire life.

[saxy]

One bit I'd add about Pixar is that it was a spinoff of Industrial Light and Magic (George Lucas's special effects company) that he sold off to Jobs in the 80s. However, seeing as ILM is also headquartered in the bay area, your point about the bay being responsible for CGI still stands :)

[johnallenbailey]

Make this Cali history, a playlist, with a grand closing video!

[vaughnmiller]

Before Boston was Silicon Valley, Upstate New York was the center of computing; IBM, Sperry Rand etc. Places like Troy, NY made precision equipment.

[CaptainWafflos]

Now do the systematic enshittification of all online platforms!

[SamBroadway]

Pong was the best Christmas gift ever in the early 70s or mid-70s I can't remember which. Everybody would come to the house and want to play Pong. We would have Pong party's.

[tomhalla]

Xerox did market a GUI setup before Apple, but failed in the market.

[hgrabows]

I absolutely love the video, as always. I did want to quibble about the statements around the origin of PC-DOS/MS-DOS. The CW that propagated over the years was Kildall blew off the IBM execs throughout thus forcing IBM's hand to seek an alternative. I assume that's what you referring to about "loose business practices". The @AlsGeekLab channel here just did a great three part series on that and dissects this CW. TL;DR a lot of the beef IBM had were terms that DRI couldn't live with as an established OS vendor with OEMs licensing from them that Microsoft had no problem signing up for. It is a bit more complicated than that even though.

[verbalkint]

Funny clip from original "Lawnmower Man"; an under the radar flick with Pierce Brosnan!