Yes, my father and grandparents remembered the days when Santa Clara valley was nothing but orchards and vineyards. Even when I was a kid, I grew up across the street from a vineyard. It sure has changed.
Technology moves forward in cycles. When I started, a computer WAS a mainframe. Just look how far its advanced in the past 25 years.
Is the world a better place for it? Certainly, it is more convenient. And, imo, it is more open. Let's forget the political side for a minute, and look simply at the financial side. Today, investors have access to a wide variety of tools and data resources for investing. Previously, this information was tightly controlled by the financial community. In my view, we can all now make bad investment decisions, instead of leaving that up to our incompetent stockbrokers. :)
Simply the fact that we can share information across many economic, geographic, political, and idealogical boundaries is benefit enough to me to say that the world is a much better place for the technology that was weaned here in SV. For every surveillance technology, there is a health technology. For every big government technology, there is a information and knowledge dispersal technology. For everyone who chooses to be a prisoner of technology, there is another who sees it for its tremendous liberating potential. |
