MICHAEL MALONE: Can Silicon Valley Find Its Way Back?

I’ve thought about this transformation a lot lately. I grew up Silicon Valley, I’ve covered it as a journalist longer than anybody, and I have known nearly all of its celebrated figures. The particular occasion for my reflection has been the publication of a special edition of my book, The Big Score (1984), the first history of Silicon Valley.

Rereading a book I wrote when I was 30 years old — when I was as shiny and optimistic as the entrepreneurs and companies I wrote about — was a disturbing experience. Here was a Valley on the cusp of greatness, filled with men and women who are now legends — Hewlett and Packard, Noyce, Moore and Grove, Jobs and Wozniak and many more — but who were then still mostly unknown to the general public, still coping with their new wealth, working in companies small enough that they knew the name of every employee. It was a time when Silicon Valley denizens still dreamed of success and — for all of their ambition — could never imagine that it would one day create the wealthiest enterprises in human history, or change the daily lives of every single person on the planet.

So, what turned that Valley into the one we know — and increasingly fear — today? How did Silicon Valley shift from wanting to change the world to wanting to run it?

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): A friend comments: “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The funny/tragic part is that such intelligent, well-intentioned, high-minded people thought they were immune to that. Correction: the funny/tragic/nightmarish Kafkaesque Orwellian part …”