The physical and metaphorical central locus of the tech industry - the name is a metonym playing on the prevalence of silicon in all manner of computer gadgetry. Topographically, the region lies on an alluvial plain within a tapering and extremely fertile graben between two parallel earthquake faults. Legend has it that Silicon Valley's techo-forming started with development of audio oscillator in Palo Alto garage in 1938 - an invention that subsequently led to the forming of Hewlett-Packard. By the early 1960's, the trope of garage-launched corporations had become thoroughly entrenched - many upscale homes in the area came replete with multi-car garages featuring full insulation, climate control, and "enough electricity to power a small town". This period saw the birth of many a company in the valley, including Memorex, MacIntosh, Cygnus, Lotus, Network ICE, NeXT, and the establishment of the techno-elite[1] (often referred to as tech oligarchs). During this time the United States government invested heavily yet discreetly in the area, often through comically open-ended defense contracts. Central to these efforts was the development and subsequent capitalistic taming of various largescale computer networks including ARPANET, UseNet, and the Internet. Contractors in the valley also benefited heavily from oscillating funding involving weaponized computer virus generation and anti-viral software[2] (efforts often conducted by shrouded branches of the same small companies).
By the 1990s, metrics on the concentration of wealth in the valley were staggering: 41% of all domestic venture capital investment, the highest home values in the United States by 21%, a GDP greater than Portugal, Ireland, or Vietnam, and the highest GDP per capita in the world. Accordingly, the adjusted poverty rate for the area is estimated to be around $100,000 per household, leading to a trend of upper-middle class homeless - teachers living in cars, highly-educated interns dumpster diving for food, etc. In response to this garish concentration of Silicon Valley wealth, anti-establishmentarian sentiment in the tech sector has at times swelled, first in the form of Ramparts, a phreaking-focused magazine published in the valley throughout the 1970s. By the late 1980's, New York's Alphabet City had emerged as a sort of bizarro world valley - with hacker groups like the Legion of Doom and Masters of Deception developed alternative, anti-capitalistic software and networking tools[3] that served to undermine the California oligarchs and subvert the efforts of the DOJ/FBI.
- ↑ A group of that included a number of former phreakers, hackers and hacktiverts, including Phiber Optik, Captain Crunch, and the founders of MacIntosh.
- ↑ The practice of hacking into a large corporate system and leaving one's digital business card had become commonplace by the mid-1990s.
- ↑ Mostly notably, the cowboy DSP MindVox.