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Margaret O'Mara: "Silicon Valley is a Truly Distinctive American Story."
Episode 51
Published 4 years, 3 months ago
Description
- Intro.
- (1:40) - Start of interview.
- (2:17) - Margaret's "origin story". She grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas. She graduated from college (history major) the year that Bill Clinton ran for President. She took a job in the Bill/Gore '92 campaign. That led to her work in the Clinton White House. It shaped her understanding of how politics and power works. She later went to graduate school to study presidential politics. Her path to studying technology came from President Dwight Eisenhower (involving the domestic economic effects of the cold war). She later worked in VP Gore's office, but not on the technology policy side, rather in empowerment zones, community and regional economic development. "It's very strange to have lived through the history that you're writing about." "The politics of the 1990s is critically important in understanding how we get to the now of the business landscape, globally and in the tech sector in particular."
- (8:54) - On why she decided to write her book “The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America.” "This is the book I wish existed in 1999 when I was in graduate school to explain [Silicon Valley], [it's an] explanatory handbook."
- (12:53) - On the role of the government in supporting the development of Silicon Valley, the "military-industrial-complex", the collective vs the individual, reality v. myth. "[Silicon Valley] is a truly distinctive American story." "What the U.S. has done, particularly since the 1940s when the technology flywheel began, is to enlarge the government in a stealthy way." "The government helped to build the computer, hardware and software industries but giving space for entrepreneurs to be entrepreneurial." "The government threw a lot of money in Silicon Valley's direction, and then got out of the way." "Government contracts were a huge and critical piece of the book of business of technology companies [in the early days], that's the launchpad that threw them into the stratosphere."
- (18:59) - On the origin story of the "Traitorous Eight", Fairchild Semiconductor, the birth of the semiconductor industry, "Defection Capital" (term coined by Tom Wolfe), Arthur Rock, and venture capital.
- (28:01) - On Silicon Valley's rise vis-a-vis other regions such as Massachusetts, ("geography was destiny" as told by Anna Lee Saxenian, in her book Regional Advantage, highlighting the organizational/management contrasts between the two regions). "The Bay Area is full of transplants, from the U.S. and around the world." "Immigration policy is part of the secret of Silicon Valley." The roles of Lockheed Martin and HP in Silicon Valley ("HP did so much to set the tone of Silicon Valley's business culture, in a very deliberate contrast to places like Boston." "Management by walking around, or by wandering around" - rather than sitting around in an office.") "The idea of meritocracy in Silicon Valley comes from that era - it was the place where smart boys who didn't have family wealth or conn