<nettime> Silicon Valley News

["cisler" <cisler@pobox.com>]

Last week in Amsterdam there was a conference that critiqued the so-called new
economy. Tulipomania DotCom <http://www.balie.nl/tulipomania>  brought together
activists, economists, artists, media critics, and a few venture capitalists.

I gave a talk on the problems we face here in Silicon Valley (where I live) and
which are aggravated by the superheated flow of money and technology into a
rather small piece of land. I will have a full report on the conference later,
but, as I said at the Global Knowledge meeting in Kuala Lumpur, the problems of
Silicon Valley can affect other places, especially those striving to become
technology oases and magnets for investment and dotcom startups.

Our newspaper, The San Jose Mercury News, <http://www.sjmercury.com/> is one of
the best for covering technology, but they also have many items about the side
effects and the down side of what is happening here.

In today's paper (6/9) Tracy Seipel's column "The Swing Shift" writes about the
appearance at the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Ted Turner (who donated $1 Billion
to the United Nations) and John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco. As usual, Chambers
was pushing Cisco and about their networking academies which are teaching people
around the world to configure Cisco routers.

"Then came Turner, a.k.a Mr. Zinger. 'Half of the people in the world don't have
electricity. How are you going to get a computer in their hands? Forget about
the digital divide.' ...The room became tense--was Turner criticizing Chambers
and other tech do-gooders in the room? Didn't he know that the Internet was the
great leveler, the second Industrial Revolution in the making? ('I though we
were the second Industrial Revolution when we started CNN 20 years ago.' Turner
said).

"Chambers was there to promote...Turner was there to provoke. And boy did he.
Turner railed against giving to 'rich people's causes,' such as the symphony or
Harvard, and the tech industry took a hit too. 'I think it's a little
self-serving of the computer industry to give away computers.' Turner said. Not
unlike the drug dealer giving you 'the first hit on the house.'

Steve Cisler (I used to give away computers for Apple's research group.)
4415 Tilbury Drive, San Jose, CA 95130
cisler@pobox.com
http://home.inreach.com/cisler
(408) 379 9076
"There are some places where the road keeps going."
-Bud Parker.

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