JOEL KOTKIN ON THE GROWING RIFT BETWEEN SILICON VALLEY AND THE MASSES: How the tech elites lost touch with reality. “Silicon Valley used to be a place of innovation, dynamism and ambition. A place where hard-working people could make the products of the future, and make something of themselves, too. But no more. The forward-thinking engineers of old have been replaced by a new elite, made up mainly of financiers, media types and NGO bureaucrats. The new overlords of tech are more interested in virtue-signalling and woke proselytising than in building and making things. Theirs is a world built on the sand of cheap credit and Democratic Party largesse, as shown by the bailout of Silicon Valley Bank earlier this month. And it’s a world increasingly removed from the rest of America.”
Plus: “There are a couple of things that have happened. The first is that, obviously, the initial people in Silicon Valley were engineers. They’ve been replaced by people who are increasingly oriented towards finance and media. There’s much more aristocracy today in Silicon Valley than there was when it was coming up. There’s a greater emphasis on credentials and pedigree.”
Never a good sign.