Publisher's Synopsis
This is the 2019 edition of "A History of Silicon Valley", first published in 2012. It is now in two volumes, The 20th Century and The 21st Century. It begins more than 100 years ago and it chronicles developments up to 2019. The title is sort of misleading because "Silicon Valley" has expanded to the whole Bay Area, so this is really a history of the high-tech industry in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is one of the most incredible stories of the modern world: how a relatively poor and underdeveloped region became the main hub of innovation in the whole world. This did not happen in a vacuum. The history of a region is always driven, first and foremost, by its society, and the society is really the protagonist of this book. Don't buy this book if you simply want to read that such and such famous billionaire was a genius. Most likely, he was not: he was the product of a society that is amazingly good at generating revolutionary (disruptive) ideas and, indirectly, at creating immense wealth, including some famous billionaires. Despite so many attempts in so many parts of the world, there is still only one Silicon Valley. Looking for the secret of Silicon Valley, one realizes how important it is to first study what is truly unique about the society of the Bay Area, the same society that has produced so many unorthodox movements: irreverent, rebellious, interdisciplinary, international, and communitarian.
