Unicorn Valley

I’ve heard complaints from the non-IT folks in Bangalore about the problems that we IT folks bring to the city: higher rents and too many cars leading to congestion, to name just a few. Kitty Morgan’s article is about how the non-IT folks of Silicon Valley feel. Some of the feelings are similar:

“Annoyance, resentment, paranoia, even something like hate.”

But she acknowledges that there are other feelings too (but those would only apply to Silicon Valley, not Bangalore). When she sees the IT folks getting into their office buses (Yeah, you heard that right: bus services in America!), she wonders:

“What if it’s envy? The ballad of the left behind…There is nothing like a shining white chariot sailing through the streets to remind us on the sidewalk that we are not the anointed.”

Silicon Valley is “an industry built on accelerating obsolescence”, as Fred Turner puts it. Tablets are doing that to the PC, and smartphones did that to…well, that list is just too long, isn’t it? That makes Morgan itching to be part of it all:

“I want to be where the action is.”

Wired magazine wrote about the Internet of Things:

 “When the objects around us can talk to one another, the elements of our physical universe will converge and spring to life.”

To which, Morgan adds:

“And lo, on the seventh day, Silicon Valley rested.”

Or take those famous driverless cars of Google. Seeing them makes Morgan feel:

“We are eyewitnesses to the future in beta.”

And there’s that fountain of youth attraction angle. As Turner put it:

“Technology is brilliant at turning products into symbols of youth…The industry has made itself a symbol of youth.”

So much so that ageism may possibly be the only form of discrimination in the Valley. As Michele Weisblatt put it:

 “Age is a barrier to entering the tech industry, even more so than gender…A company can mold a younger person and at the same time pay her less.”

The entrepreneur, Vinod Khosla, was even more brutal:

“After 45, people basically die. They keep doing what they were doing before, and it’s the worst thing that can happen.”

Of course, some tell Morgan she was just falling for the myth around the place:

“It’s the magical unicorn castle thing.”

And while she agrees there’s definitely some of that going on, she still says:

 “Forgive me for wanting to ride that unicorn.”