Silicon Valley displays a quiet hum without much excitement. Excitement comes when engineers complete the latest cycle of their project or develop the new, cool, innovating tool we will start using. Or, Tech workers escape in the evening over drinks and dinner with friends sharing news of their daily lives. Competitive, yet always looking for a solution together.
Yesterday brought other news to me.
My day started out watching the eerie news of the California shooting. It was different this time because this happened within 10 miles of where I am located. And the suspect escaped through a peaceful neighborhood suburb nearby where I drove past the County Sheriff blockades last night.
My day finished reading the news of Steve Jobs death, a Silicon Valley icon. Although I never personally met Steve, I walked the same paths he walked in the southern San Francisco bay area. It was when I finished reading Apple Confidential by Owen W. Linzmayer that I became intrigued with Silicon Valley history. Yes, ever changing, from the gold rush, orchards, and now technology. Steve Jobs was the one with strange, unusual ideas - they worked.
I am reminded of this poem I found which I used to share with people on day trips as we returned to Silicon Valley.
Mary Bowden Carroll from "Ten Years in Paradise"
Silicon Valley is a place of legend and hyperbole. Promoters have lauded it as ‘the center of a progressive force for global change’ through technology. Social activists claim it to be a ‘place of warped and unrealistic financial expectations – where success is measured in terms of dollars, not personal happiness.’
For most of its residents Silicon Valley is simply an exciting and challenging place to work and live surrounded by spectacular scenery with an unbeatable climate. They just have to share these considerable benefits with a large number of fellow residents, all of whom seem to want to travel on the same freeway at the same time.
This is not a big city, it is a suburb, with local people stories.
Yesterday, a day to remember ~ The Fun Tour Guru