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January 29, 2014 01:06 am GMT

Silicon Valley Is Now Public Enemy No. 1, And We Only Have Ourselves To Blame

wantedFor a region noted for its problem-solving orientation and progressive ethos, Silicon Valley has managed to anger a pretty wide swath of American society. Some of the blows have been self-inflicted, like venture capitalists who compare progressivism to Nazism or who block access to public beaches. But those issues are mere skirmishes compared to the war over increasing inequality in San Francisco and the Bay Area, which have led to attacks on private buses and stalkers of Google executives. Unfortunately, all of these trees are obscuring our view of the forest. The kerfuffles over housing, company shuttles, and arrogant techies pale in comparison to the much more fundamental issue facing Silicon Valley today – people across the country are starting to hate us, and that is not going to change anytime soon. This is an exceptional period for the most exceptional region in the country. Never before in Silicon Valley’s history has the work of entrepreneurs and engineers been under such assault. Privacy critics have been on a tear since the NSA leaks by Edward Snowden, George Packer has written extensively on the “unwinding” of the American economy and the obliteration of the middle class, and Evgeny Morozov has aggressively criticized the messaging emanating from startup circles about “Internet centrism.” The technology industries around Silicon Valley have had a remarkable run in building support among the general public for our innovations. That tide has permanently turned, and our community is ultimately to blame. The causes are numerous and include a changing business focus, exceptionalism and disruption, as well as an increasing media glare. How we navigate this new environment will determine our ability to build the future innovation we have come to expect. Expecting Gold And Finding A Lump Of Coal At the heart of this controversy is Silicon Valley’s changing emphasis from pure technological advancement to disruption of existing manufacturing and service industries. For decades, the region worked in greenfield territory – spaces where existing incumbents were only other technology companies or simply did not exist. The advancement of vacuum tubes, defense technologies like radar, and integrated circuits in the 1920s through 1960s essentially had no antecedents. Often, Silicon Valley companies had to compete directly against large technology conglomerates on the East Coast like RCA or DEC. While startups did not have that kind of scale, they were instead far more nimble and could build new technological innovations at

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